Co-occurring Risk Factors

Many risk factors occur simultaneously and place children at a greater risk for maltreatment. These factors include parent and child characteristics, family factors, and community conditions.

A Cumulative Risk Model of Child Physical Maltreatment Potential: Findings From a Community-Based Study (PDF - 1,208 KB)
Lamela & Figueiredo (2015)
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Proposes that child maltreatment is related to an accumulation of risk factors, including parents' characteristics, experiences of abuse in childhood, unemployment, and others. Research has shown that these factors do not operate in isolation, and their combining effect should be analyzed.

Examines risk and protective factors for maltreatment at multiple levels including individual and neighborhood-level poverty. Individual and neighborhood-level poverty has shown to be associated with higher risk for child abuse and neglect. This study examines the relationship between physical child abuse and neglect and neighborhood structural factors, processes, and individual characteristics.

Modeling Risk for Child Abuse and Harsh Parenting in Families with Depressed and Substance-Abusing Parents
Kelley, Lawrence, Milletich, Hollis, and Henson (2015)
Child Abuse & Neglect, 43
Discusses substance abuse by father-only and by both parents as well as parents' depression as risk factors for child abuse. Results showed that parental substance abuse was associated with child abuse and harsh parenting and that a parent's own report of depressive symptoms also predicted their risk for child maltreatment.

New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research: Causality
Committee on Child Maltreatment Research, Policy, and Practice for the Next Decade: Phase II; Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on Law and Justice; Institute of Medicine; National Research Council (2014)
In New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research
Describes how most recent studies in the field of child abuse and neglect discuss a variety of risk factors that contribute to the likelihood of child maltreatment, which together could enhance examination of causes of abuse.

Prenatal Substance Exposure and Reporting of Child Maltreatment by Race and Ethnicity
Putnam-Hornstein, Prindle, & Leventhal (2016)
Pediatrics, 138(3)
Investigates the effect of substance exposure on reports of child maltreatment made to child protective services, accounting for whether clinicians are more likely to report Black and Hispanic substance-exposed infants compared with White infants.

Psychological Maltreatment (PDF - 716 KB)
Hibbard, Barlow, & MacMillan (2017)
Explores the psychological or emotional maltreatment of children and discusses co-occurring risk factors for such abuse, which include parental psychiatric illness such as depression and substance use and exposure to intimate partner violence.

Risk Terrain Modeling Predicts Child Maltreatment
Daley, Bachmann M., Bachmann, B., Pedigo, Bui, & Coffman (2016)
Child Abuse & Neglect, 62
Discusses risk terrain modeling, a tool that enables analysis of the cumulative effect of environmental factors thought to contribute to child maltreatment. Risk terrain modeling can be used to create an accurate prediction model for future child abuse and neglect cases.

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