title: Evaluating the risk of child abuse: the Child Abuse Risk Assessment Scale (CARAS).
abstract: The present study developed the Child Abuse Risk Assessment Scale (CARAS), an actuarial instrument for the assessment of the risk of physical child abuse. Data of 2,363 Chinese parents (47.7% male) living in Hong Kong were used in the analyses. Participants were individually interviewed with a questionnaire assessing their perpetration of child abuse and some theoretically or empirically tested factors associated with child abuse. Using the split-half validation procedure, the 5-factor, 64-item CARAS was created and validated. When applying to the second half of the split sample, the CARAS had a sensitivity of 81.9%, a specificity of 77.8%, and an overall accuracy of 78.1%. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was .91. Overall, our findings showed that the CARAS is a simple, systematic and validated instrument identifying at-risk population of child maltreatment in Chinese societies.
authors: Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. eklchan@hkucc.hku.hk
authors: Ko Ling
authors: KL
authors: Chan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards*; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods; D012307:Risk Factors; D012649:Self Concept; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*