Situating maltreatment in the social context: Challenges for research

•A variety of moderating factors are likely to interact with maltreatment experiences in influencing psychosocial outcomes.•Research investigations of maltreatment are often limited by small sample sizes.•Careful reporting of data on contextual factors will be important for future meta-analyses of research on maltreatment.

This article is a reply to Kagan’s (in press) commentary on our earlier article (Luke & Banerjee, 2013), which presented a meta-analysis and systematic review of research on the links between childhood maltreatment and social understanding. We address Kagan’s comments about the depiction of maltreatment as an isolated independent variable, and consider the specific obstacles faced by researchers in this area when seeking to understand the role played by social–contextual factors. We also consider how Kagan’s extension of our argument about heterogeneity in maltreated samples might usefully be applied to future research with this vulnerable group.