Assessing child exposure to adult domestic violence

The emerging interest in children's exposure to adult domestic violence has brought about calls for better methods to assess such exposure. Currently no assessment tools exist that adequately measure the diversity of children's experiences with domestic violence. In this article we identify several factors affecting children's experiences and consequent outcomes, including concurrent victimization and various risk and protective factors. We then review several measures that include at least one question regarding adult domestic violence and that assess child exposure to and/or perception of domestic violence. We conclude that existing measures do not comprehensively identify factors related to child exposure and thus call for the development of new tools that more thoroughly and accurately assess child exposure to adult domestic violence.