IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/cysrev/v31y2009i8p873-878.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child safety measure as a proxy for child maltreatment: Preliminary evidence for the potential and validity of using ICD-9 coded hospital discharge data at the community level

Author

Listed:
  • Ben-Arieh, Asher
  • McDonell, James

Abstract

Objective The purposes of the study, carried out in the context of Strong Communities for Children in the Golden Strip (Strong Communities) in South Carolina, were to identify a set of ICD-9 codes (The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, which represents the standard nomenclature for classifying mortality and morbidity data), to establish base rates for ICD-9 coded child safety in a community measure and to undertake a preliminary analysis of the validity of ICD-9 coded injuries as a measure for child safety at the neighborhood level.Method The study drew on data from two sources. Data on child injuries were extracted from the linked agency administrative data base maintained by the South Carolina Budget and Control Board. Data on neighborhood distress were derived from census data in the census block group level. An initial pool of ICD-9 codes for children's injuries was provided for the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 reporting periods. An expert panel consisting of five physicians was convened to review the ICD-9 codes to assess their relationship to child safety, and to collectively decide on the codes to be used as the measure and proxy for child maltreatment.Results The findings offer a glance to the utility and potential of using ICD-9 coded injuries as a measure of child safety. The results present a final list of 323 codes of the ICD-9 codes (230 codes of child physical safety, 57 codes of child sexual abuse, and 36 codes of child safety not otherwise classified). Moderate to strong correlations were found between the suggestive codes and the Neighborhood Distress Index. Further, these data served well to establish a baseline to monitor the prevalence of child safety and injuries.Conclusions The finding offers preliminary support for the validity of ICD-9 coded child injuries as a measure of child safety. There is great potential in this approach for monitoring the prevalence of injuries of children as well as children safety in the community level.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben-Arieh, Asher & McDonell, James, 2009. "Child safety measure as a proxy for child maltreatment: Preliminary evidence for the potential and validity of using ICD-9 coded hospital discharge data at the community level," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 873-878, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:31:y:2009:i:8:p:873-878
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(09)00081-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Van Voorhis, Rebecca A. & Gilbert, Neil, 1998. "The structure and performance of child abuse reporting systems," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 207-221, March.
    2. Rovi, S. & Chen, P.-H. & Johnson, M.S., 2004. "The Economic Burden of Hospitalizations Associated with Child Abuse and Neglect," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(4), pages 586-590.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Yuerong & Terrell, Lindsay & Joyce, Brianna & Black, Julia & Kaplan, Samantha J. & Gifford, Elizabeth J., 2023. "Defining suspected child maltreatment using International Classification of Diseases codes: A scoping literature review," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    2. James McDonell & Tracy Waters, 2011. "Construction and Validation of an Observational Scale of Neighborhood Characteristics," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 104(3), pages 439-457, December.
    3. Chen, Wendy & Glasser, Saralee & Benbenishty, Rami & Davidson-Arad, Bilha & Tzur, Shmuel & Lerner-Geva, Liat, 2010. "The contribution of a hospital child protection team in determining suspected child abuse and neglect: Analysis of referrals of children aged 0-9," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 1664-1669, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wong, William Chi Wai & Chen, Wei Qing & Goggins, William B. & Tang, Catherine S. & Leung, Phil W., 2009. "Individual, familial and community determinants of child physical abuse among high-school students in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 1819-1825, May.
    2. Armeda Stevenson Wojciak & Brandon Butcher & Aislinn Conrad & Carol Coohey & Resmiye Oral & Corinne Peek-Asa, 2021. "Trends, Diagnoses, and Hospitalization Costs of Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States of America," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-12, July.
    3. Waters, Hugh Richard & Hyder, Adnan Ali & Rajkotia, Yogesh & Basu, Suprotik & Butchart, Alexander, 2005. "The costs of interpersonal violence--an international review," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 303-315, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:31:y:2009:i:8:p:873-878. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.