Presentation Information
[P-38-04]Challenges and considerations in constructing image-based assessment of public attitudes towards potential child maltreatment: insights into interpretation issues through the eyes of trauma clinicians
*Emelie Louise Miller, Misari Oe, Motohiro Ozone (Kurume Univ. dept. of Neuropsychiatry (Japan))
Keywords:
Child maltreatment,Assessment tool,Expert feedback,Public perceptions
Enhanced understanding of public attitudes towards child maltreatment (CM) and improved cultural sensitivity is necessary to advance childhood abuse and neglect prevention. Today, images are commonly at the forefront of people’s attention, creating opportunities to utilize the medium in childhood trauma research. The present cross-national project’s overall aim is to develop an image-based assessment tool to measure public perceptions of potential child maltreatment, including possible gender effects through varying portrayed gender of parent and child. The project departs from Japan that offers an exciting vantage point with its recent changes in child abuse prevention laws and succeeding debates on parental practices. The first step in the assessment construction consisted of three focus group discussions with seven Japanese trauma professionals, who work as psychiatrists or psychologists. The participants read, wrote, and discussed numerous fictional scenarios of obvious and potential parental physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and physical and emotional neglect. A thematic analysis of the focus group discussions resulted in four themes: The inherent dilemma in illustrating ambiguity, Trauma co-occurrence and category confusion, Mental segregation of physical abuse and corporal punishment and Challenges in portrayal of gender. The subjective nature of what is viewed as constituting CM remains strong, even among professionals within the same sociocultural context. Problems in portraying the potential, limits regarding category distinctions, cultural variations in where lines are drawn between physical abuse and corporal punishment, and illustration of gender require further consideration prior to final item generation and trial assessment of public perceptions.