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Toward a Nursing Definition of Child Maltreatment Using Seriousness Vignettes

NCJ Number
120987
Journal
Violence, the Family, and Society Volume: 8 Issue: 4 Dated: (July 1986) Pages: 1-14
Author(s)
T R Misener
Date Published
1986
Length
14 pages
Annotation
To determine whether nurses operationally define child maltreatment uniformly regardless of their practice specialty, eight practice groups (n=596) participated in a mail survey.
Abstract
The instrument required respondents to assign a seriousness value to each of 78 vignettes of potentially negative childrearing practices from statutes, actual clinical cases, and advice from experts in the field. Multivariate analysis of variance was performed to test for significant differences among nursing specialty groups in their ratings of the seriousness vignettes. Although nurses were found to differ among specialty groups in their assignment of seriousness ratings to vignettes, statistically significant differences are not necessarily indicative of substantive differences. A closer examination of the data revealed that in only 5 of a potential 37 vignettes were there significant differences among specialty groups. Of these five vignettes, four fell within parental sexual mores, with the differences being most evident between the group-means of only two of eight specialty groups -- community health nurses and anesthetists. Actual differences were further minimized when viewed contextually with the overall ranking of parental sexual mores. 4 tables, 25 references.

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