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Epidemiological Study and Administrative Data Collection on Child Abuse and Neglect in Croatia

In Croatia, the epidemiological research on child abuse and neglect was conducted throughout the whole country: 40 primary and 29 secondary schools were selected, using a multi-stage stratified cluster sample. In each school 2 class divisions per targeted grade were randomly selected. In order to reach the expected sample size (2% of the population for each targeted age groups) 5, 006 children were approached and 3, 688 (73.67%) participated in the study. The highest participation was for the 16 years old (84.12%), while for the 11 and 13 years old the participation was 69.24% due to the fact that for the children younger than 14 written parental consent was needed according to the Croatian Code of Ethics for the Research with Children. By Croatian law, all cases of detected violence against children, including witnessing violence between parents, must be reported to Centres for social care (CSC). The date for reported cases of child abuse and neglect were collected from 37 CSC that geographically correspond to areas covered by the epidemiological research. In all these CSC there were only 311 reported cases of direct child abuse and neglect (67.52% cases were in depth analyzed), and 573 cases of children witnessing violence between parents (48% were analyzed) for the targeted age groups. The preliminary results from both studies will be discussed with the focus on specific challenges that must be addressed in their generalization.

Child Abuse and Neglect; Epidemiology; Croatia; BECAN

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