Doe Hilary A, Osborne Cynthia, Huffman Jennifer, Craig Sean M, Shero Mason
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, Peabody College of Education & Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Child Maltreat. 2025 May;30(2):331-342. doi: 10.1177/10775595241268227. Epub 2024 Jul 30.
The present study is one of the largest quasi-experimental studies to date on the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment during a child's first two years of life. In this matched comparison group study, we compare 8796 families that participated in a home visiting program (HV families) to 8796 similar non-participating families (non-HV families) selected from birth records using Coarsened Exact Matching. Using sequential logistic regression, we identify that HV families have significantly higher odds of experiencing a child maltreatment investigation by their child's second birthday compared to non-HV families; however, among those that were investigated, HV families have significantly lower odds of having their first investigation substantiated for maltreatment. Overall, HV families do not differ significantly from non-HV families in the odds of experiencing a substantiated investigation over 2 years. We share implications for considering surveillance bias, and we highlight the importance of including both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations when studying the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment.
本研究是迄今为止关于家访对儿童生命最初两年有记录的虐待儿童行为影响的最大规模准实验研究之一。在这项匹配比较组研究中，我们将8796个参与家访项目的家庭（家访家庭）与8796个从出生记录中使用粗化精确匹配法选取的类似未参与家庭（非家访家庭）进行比较。使用序贯逻辑回归分析，我们发现与非家访家庭相比，家访家庭在孩子两岁生日前遭受虐待儿童调查的几率显著更高；然而，在那些接受调查的家庭中，家访家庭首次调查被证实存在虐待行为的几率显著更低。总体而言，家访家庭与非家访家庭在两年内遭受被证实调查的几率上没有显著差异。我们阐述了考虑监测偏差的影响，并强调在研究家访对有记录的虐待儿童行为的影响时，纳入已证实和未证实调查的重要性。
