Efforts at the federal level to obtain accurate figures on the incidence and prevalence of child abuse and neglect in the United States continue to encounter serious methodological problems. In the most recent national data from 1997, information was gathered from state and national findings on the sources and number of child abuse and neglect reports, the types of maltreatment, the dispositions of the investigations, the child protective investigations and services, the characteristics of the child victims, and the children's relationship to the perpetrators (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). However, due to the variations across the entities in definition, investigatory factors, and substantiation criteria, the information gathered is not consistent across the states.

Based on the 1997 figures, CPS determined that just under one million children had cases of indicated or substantiated abuse or neglect, a decrease from more than one million victims in 1996 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). In 1997, CPS agencies investigated more than two million reports involving more than three million children and substantiated 967 deaths due to maltreatment. The national rate of victimization was 13.9 victims per 1,000 children under age 18 in the U.S. population, which is slightly higher than 13.4 victims per 1,000 children in 1990. The rate of child victims peaked in 1993 at 15.3 victims per 1,000 and has continued to drop since that time. However, the National Research Council (1993) reviewed The extant data and recommended numerous changes in the data gathering methods in order to reduce the disparity in epidemiological reports.Establishing the prevalence of child maltreatment in the United States is hampered by problems of definition, differences in criteria for substantiation across agencies, and methodological problems, such as basing figures on retrospective studies of adults. In the 1970s, it was estimated that 14% of U.S. children had been involved in abusive violence (Straus, 1979), whereas reports in the 1980s used figures of 2% to 3% nationally (National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1988). This difference in reported prevalence rate resulted in criticism of underreporting (Russell & Trainor, 1984). Prevalence figures are best established in the area of sexual abuse, with figures of approximately 20% of all women and 5% to 10% of all men being victimized as children (Finkelhor, 1994). . .

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