Cell Phones and the Measurement of Child Neglect

Abstract

Two multisite studies were conducted to assess the feasibility of using cell phone interviews (the Parent-Child Activities Interview) to learn more about the quality of daily parenting among high-risk mothers, including child neglect. In Study 1, 45 primiparous teenage mothers with 3- to 9-month-old infants were recruited and randomly assigned to two groups: one received frequent cell phone interviews and the other group less frequent interviews over their home telephone. Relationships among paper-and-pencil surveys of parenting (gathered in person) and a Parenting Essentials score (coded from the phone interviews) were significantly correlated. In Study 2, adolescent and adult mothers and their first-born children ( n = 544) completed 2 observations of parenting in their home as well as a series of 3 PCA calls at ages 4 and 8 months. Parenting Essentials coded from the interviews were significantly related to observed measures of parenting at both time points. The Parent-Child Activities Interview shows promise as a reliable and valid measure of parenting, capturing frequent and detailed information about daily parenting practices. Cell phones may prove useful in intervening with mothers at risk of suboptimal parenting and child neglect.

Harnessing Health Information Technology in Domestic Violence in the United States: A Scoping Review

“…Four online trainings were designed for multidisciplinary healthcare professionals [30][31][32][33]. Five studies leveraged mobile devices to provide intervention [34][35][36][37][38]. Two studies used email as an intervention tool [31,39].…”

“…Five studies delineated the effectiveness of HIT intervention [34,40,41,46,47] and three focused on various types of DV assessment [29,35,48]. Only one study emphasized screening for patients [36].…”

“…Different types of DV survivors or potential survivors were captured in this review, such as adolescent mothers [36], abused women [27,42], pregnant women [25,46], and battered women [47]. Simultaneously, participants were extended to various professions like nurses [30], physicians [31], dental students [32], and law enforcement officers [34].…”

“…Various research methods are used, including randomized controlled trials (N = 5) [26-28, 43, 46], and longitudinal (N = 1) [36], mixed methods (N = 5) [29,33,[37][38][39], feasibility tests (N = 5) [25,30,34,40,44], non-equivalent group design (N = 1) [45], quasi-experimental design (N = 1) [32], as well as qualitative studies (N = 1) [41].…”

“…Physical safety outcomes were reported in five studies [25-27, 36, 43]. Only one study assessed the abuse score for physical sexual violence [43], while the other one evaluated the neglect score among children at a home setting [36]. Both studies indicated a decrease in scores for both neglect and abuse.…”