Measurement of emotional/psychological child maltreatment: A review

BackgroundEmotional/psychological child maltreatment (ECM) is a major public health problem with serious consequences including emotional and behavioral problems. Nevertheless, ECM is an understudied area.ObjectivesThe aims of this review are to identify measures of ECM and to evaluate their psychometric properties and utilities. We provide a summary of ECM measures that have been tested for their reliability and validity, evaluate the quality of these assessments and suggest directions for future research.MethodsWe searched PsycINFO and Medline databases from 2000 to 2010 in addition to a hand search of retrieved references; 2344 were identified and the abstracts reviewed independently by two authors to identify relevant articles. Using pre-established criteria, 144 of those articles were selected and reviewed in full to assess whether the instruments included a separate measure of ECM and its psychometric properties.ResultsForty-five articles examining 33 measures met the inclusion criteria and were selected for further review. The majority of measures demonstrated acceptable reliability; fewer measures had evaluated one or more types of validity.ConclusionBoth reliability and validity testing are required in order to establish more accurate measures of ECM.Practice implicationsReliable and valid measures are necessary to enhance our limited knowledge about the distribution, determinants and consequences of ECM.