The research initially focused on determining these agency costs, but found that the appropriate data could not be obtained or linked. Analyzing the costs requires linking information from three different databases: the initial investigation of child abuse and neglect for fiscal year 1983, the county database that records services provided to these children and their families, and files on the amount of time or cost associated with reimbursable worker services. Only one-fourth of the case reports could be linked by the child's name across the three data sets. Service data were also missing for many cases. Data needed to complete the study should have: 1) a common identifier for each child, 2) information on all services for all children, 3) more direct linkage of costs to services, 4) identifiers that permit the aggregation of data, and 5) research and analysis as an integral part of data collection.