Factors Influencing School Counselors’ Suspecting and Reporting of Childhood Physical Abuse: Investigating Child, Parent, School, and Abuse Characteristics

Abstract

This study sought to explore possible child abuse reporting disparities among school counselors. The participants in this study were elementary school counselors (N = 398) from across the United States. Each participant read a series of vignettes and completed a survey regarding their inclinations about suspecting and reporting childhood physical abuse. The surveys manipulated the following variables: student race, family socioeconomic status (between-subject variables), relationship with the school counselor, and severity of abuse (within-subject variables). School counselors were found to be more likely to suspect defensive parents of abuse than cooperative or non-involved parents. School counselors were also less likely to suspect abuse when a child reported being hit without physical evidence than if a child had a bruised or broken arm. Last, school counselors were more likely to report a child with a bruised arm over a child who reported being hit without physical evidence. Although certain concerns emerged as a result of this study and all signs of abuse should be reported to the appropriate authorities, school counselors were more likely, across the board, to report abuse than to suspect abuse.

A Systematic Review of Online Response Rates in Four Counseling Journals

“…Examples include “because of the decision to use e‐mail and instant messenger for data collection, the researchers could not obtain additional information from students’ nonverbal or verbal behavior” (Henfield, Woo, & Washington, 2013, p. 134); “E‐mail data collection seemed to elicit more brief responses; phone interviews, while no prompting was offered, elicited richer responses with more details” (Dollarhide, Smith, & Lemberger, 2007, p. 367); and “since the survey was administered online, the researchers had no control over the environment in which the survey was taken. Discerning whether or not the environment could have had an effect on participant responses is difficult” (Tillman et al, 2016, p. 112). Of the 10 times this code was noted in the articles we reviewed, four of the articles were relating the issue specifically to qualitative data, whereas the remaining six articles were related to quantitative data.…”

Perceived Preparedness of School Practitioners to Identify and Report Child Maltreatment

“…They found that the vignette mean scores of school counselors who would report abuse was higher than the mean score of school counselors who suspected abuse (Tillman et al, 2015). These results suggested that school counselors are more likely to report even if suspicion is low (Tillman et al, 2015). However, responding to a vignette does not mean that school counselors would respond in a similar way if presented with a situation in person.…”

“…Regarding training experiences, Tillman et al (2015) conducted a survey asking 398 practicing school counselors from across the United States to respond to one of six different vignettes of child maltreatment with a different race, socioeconomic status, and severity of abuse. They found that the vignette mean scores of school counselors who would report abuse was higher than the mean score of school counselors who suspected abuse (Tillman et al, 2015). These results suggested that school counselors are more likely to report even if suspicion is low (Tillman et al, 2015).…”

How can school help victims of violence? Evaluation of online training for European schools’ staff from a multidisciplinary approach

“…As a result, victims do not receive specialized help and support [19,24] or do not disclose their experiences [25]. Many reasons for this behavior have been described by previous studies, such as low levels of knowledge or poor training, fear of the consequences for the victim, the family, the reporter and the school or lack of support from the school management team [26][27][28][29].…”