Re: statistics re: risk to abuse

["Des Runyan" <drunyan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I calculated the rates from the prospective study in Neonatal 
Intensive Care Unit at the University of North Carolina many years 
ago (Hunter, Kilstrom,  Kraybill and Loda, Pediatrics 1978; 61:629). 
Parents had been prospectively asked about abuse in childhood and 
then their children were followed for the first 2 years of life. The 
relative risk for subsequent reports was 38; meaning that parents 
reporting abuse had  a 38 fold increase in being reported for their 
own children (95% confidence interval 11-129).  However, parents with 
a history of maltreatment constituted only 18% of the parents of 
children from this cohort who were  reported over the next several 
years.  Similar calculations can be developed from a paper by Wm. 
Altemeir. We reported this calculation back in 1985 in the Journal of 
Emergency Medicine (Gothard, Runyan & Hadler vol 3 :pages 181-194). 
The take-home message was that the predictive value of knowing that a 
parent was maltreated helps relatively little and that many of us 
apparently master maltreatment without a parental education.

Des


>I am looking for information on a question a student had concerning the
>likelihood that someone who experienced abuse as a child would abuse as
>an adult. The student stated she attended a workshop in which the
>presenter said that someone who was abused as a child was 200% more
>likely to abuse their own children. The information was cited to Pettit,
>however, the student did not have the title of the study. The student
>wondered how that could be when she was cited information from Widom's
>study that the risk is around 30% to abuse.
>
>Does anyone have the title of the study by Pettit and is the statistic
>cited an accurate reflection on the study?
>
>Leslie Welin, M.Ed
>Faculty
>Health and Human Services
>Malaspina University-College
>Duncan, British Columbia
>Canada

___________________________________________________________________________
Desmond K. Runyan, MD, DrPH                         	tel (919) 843-8262
Professor and Chair of Social Medicine                	fax (919) 966-7499
Professor of Pediatrics
Campus Box 7240 
	e-mail:<drunyan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Chapel Hill, NC  27599-7240
___________________________________________________________________________