Estimating Surveillance Bias in Child Maltreatment Reporting During Home Visiting Program Involvement
Date
2022
Journal Title
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Publisher
Child Maltreatment
Abstract
It is unclear if surveillance bias (increased reports to Child Protective Services [CPS] related to program involvement) has a
substantial impact on evaluation of home visiting (HV) prevention programs. We estimated surveillance bias using data from
Connecticut’s HV program, birth certificates, CPS, and hospitals. Using propensity score matching, we identified 15,870 families
similar to 4015 HV families. The difference-in-differences approach was used to estimate surveillance bias as the change in
investigated reports from the last 6 months of program involvement to the next 6 months. The median age of the children at
program exit was 1.2 years (range: 60 days, 5 years). We estimated that 25.6% of investigated reports in the HV group resulted
from surveillance bias. We reviewed CPS reports of 194 home-visited families to determine if a home visitor made the report
and found that 10% were directly from home visitors. Program evaluations should account for surveillance bias
Description
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Keywords
child abuse, program evaluation, child protective services, bias, research, home visiting
Citation
Holland, M. L., Esserman, D., Taylor, R. M., Flaherty, S., & Leventhal, J. M. (2022). Estimating Surveillance Bias in Child Maltreatment Reporting During Home Visiting Program Involvement. Child Maltreatment, 10775595221118606.