Important Facts for Child emotional abuse, self-reported
Definition
Self-reported child emotional abuse data is retrospective data collected from adults via the Utah BRFSS Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Module and youth via the Utah YRBS tier 2 ACEs and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) questionnaire. Adult prevalence is looking retrospectively at their whole childhood (<18), while youth prevalence only looks back at the previous 12 months.Numerator
The number of youth or adults who indicated at least one instance of emotional abuse on the YRBS (2021) or BRFSS (2013, 2016, 2018, 2020).Denominator
The total number of youth or adults who provided any response to the emotional abuse question on the YRBS (2021) or BRFSS (2013, 2016, 2018, 2020).Data Interpretation Issues
BRFSS (Adults) - How often did a parent or adult in your home ever swear at you, insult you, or put you down? Was it . . . (Possible answers: Never, Once, More than once; question refers to the time period before the respondent was 18 years of age) YRBS (Youth) - During the past 12 months, how many times has a parent or other adult in your home sworn at you, insulted you, or put you down? (Possible answers: 0, 1, 2 or 3, 4 or 5, or 6+) Response options from both surveys were dichotomized into whether or not emotional abuse occurred at all during the referenced time frame. The responses are subjective, however, the subjective reality is what seems to matter when considering the potential for long-term negative impacts.Why Is This Important?
All types of child abuse represent a threat to public health. Child emotional abuse is one of eight commonly tracked adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and research into child abuse and neglect (CAN) and ACEs has consistently shown the potential for many negative long-term impacts on health, opportunity, and well-being. Tracking child abuse prevalence is a complicated task and some of the best data available are self-reported retrospective data which gives a more complete view of prevalence over child protective services or hospital data.Healthy People Objective IVP-38:
Reduce nonfatal child maltreatmentU.S. target: 8.5 maltreatment victims per 1,000 children