Barbara Needell, MSW, PhD University of California at Berkeley

CENTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES RESEARCH School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

A Quick and Dirty take on NIS-4

Sedlak, A.J., Mettenburg, J., Basena, M., Petta, I., McPherson, K., Greene, A., and Li, S. (2010). Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4): Report to Congress.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

Sedlak, A.J., McPherson, K., & Das, B. (2010). Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4): Supplementary Analyses of Race Differences in Child Maltreatment Rates in the

NIS-4. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

Barbara Needell, MSW, PhDUniversity of California at Berkeley


What is the NIS?

• National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect

• Primary objectives – Provide updated estimates of the incidence of child abuse and neglect in the U.S. and measure changes in incidence from earlier studies

• Data comes from both CPS reports and “sentinels”


NIS-4 Overview

• Data from a nationally representative sample of 122 counties with 126 CPS agencies

• Two definitional standards of maltreatment used: Harm Standard and Endangerment Standard

• NIS-4 was the first NIS cycle to observe “significant” differences in maltreatment rates according to race


Why did the NIS-4 find differences by race (according to the NIS-4 authors)?

• Changes in circumstances for Black and White children from NIS-3 to NIS-4

• NIS-4 had higher precision of estimates of maltreatment than NIS-3


Changes in Circumstances – Economic


Precision of Estimates


What Changed Between NIS-3 and NIS-4?• Both White and Black Children showed substantial

decrease in maltreatment rates over time • % change in rate of White harm standard

maltreatment from NIS-3 = -32%• % change in rate of Black harm standard

maltreatment from NIS-3 = -24% • A steeper decrease for White Children smaller CIs

result in “new” differences by race


Supplementary Analysis• In NIS-4, a SES measure was constructed with 2

categories: -“low” (parents with no high school diploma, less than $15,000 income, or participation in a poverty program) -“not-low” (everybody else)

• There was a large amount of missing SES data that had to be imputed (44.9%!!!)


Race Differences and SES• The supplementary report notes that income, or

SES, is biggest predictor of maltreatment rates• Many of the race differences in maltreatment rates

emerged primarily for physical abuse and were related to SES status

• Differences by race were small to nonexistent among children from “low” SES household, but larger among children in “not-low” SES households


…in their own words“Independent evidence indicates that Black and White children very probably have different underlying SES distributions within the NIS–4 non-low SES category, with the not-low SES Black children less well off than the not-low SES White children. If the economic resources of Black and White children had been equivalent in this condition, then the observed pattern of higher risk for Black children under non-low SES conditions may not have emerged. For these reasons, the race differences observed in the not-low SES condition in this report must be interpreted with caution. “ (italics mine)


Why did the NIS-4 find differences by race?

More Precise Maltreatment Estimates

Imprecise SES Measures

Newly DiscoveredDifferences in

Maltreatment RatesBy Race


Summary/Conclusions

• The “increased precision” explanation raises questions about the widespread interpretation of earlier NIS reports

• The “income gap” explanation is not yet generally accepted as valid and is under scrutiny

• We do not know from NIS-4 if differences would exist independent of SES if more precise demographic measures were used


IMHO

• It was wrong to use NIS-1,2,3 to “justify” the need for racial disparities work

• It is becoming increasingly clear that SES and race interact

• “Why are people poor?” (Undoing Racism trainings) is a very good question, and may hold the key to any understanding of the lack of difference for poor children

• The work remains


Barbara [email protected]

510 290 6334

CSSR.BERKELEY.EDU/UCB_CHILDWELFARE

Presentation Developed by Erin Clark

Documents

Barbara Needell, MSW, PhD University of California at Berkeley