title: Screening for maternal experiences of physical abuse during childhood.
abstract: Because a parental history of abuse during childhood is a documented risk factor for child abuse, pediatricians have been urged to assess parents' childhood discipline experiences. A brief set of questions was developed to detect a maternal history of childhood physical abuse that could be incorporated into a comprehensive psychosocial screening questionnaire. A criterion-based definition was used as the measure for physical abuse. In phase I, four screening questions were developed in a cross-sectional survey of 284 middle-class women attending a family medicine clinic, of whom 32% met the criteria definition for physical abuse. In phase II, the screening questions were tested in 428 mothers seen in Salt Lake City- and Seattle-area pediatric clinics. The four screening questions had a sensitivity of > 90%, a specificity of > 85%, a positive predictive value of > 75%, and a negative predictive value of > or = 90%--as compared with the criteria-based definition in both pediatric settings. These four screening questions compared favorably to a criteria-based definition of physical abuse during childhood and may be useful additions to psychosocial questionnaires.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Kemper
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Carlin
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Buntain-Ricklefs
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001527:Behaviorism; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002668:Child Rearing; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009035:Mothers; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011678:Punishment; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires