The Ninth Edition of World Perspectives has a particular focus on child maltreatment data and is divided into six main sections. The first section includes the commentaries obtained from respondents on innovative studies or major issues they have faced in developing their local child abuse response systems. These 11 commentaries cover two broad areas ???the use of research to improve policy and practice efforts addressing child abuse, and research on the incidence or impacts of child maltreatment. As a group, they underscore the variability that exists in how child abuse is defined and addressed worldwide and how this variability presents unique challenges in crafting international policy or training to address child maltreatment and child protection.The second section includes five articles describing diverse aspects of data collection: the challenges and issues raised in efforts to include child maltreatment questions in a large health survey of the general population; an overview of the recent developments and initiatives concerning child abuse and neglect data collection in Greece and South East Europe; a public health perspective to child abuse and neglect; and, the use of child helpline data to understand the magnitude of maltreatment in a very specific group of children who uses a children’s helpline.Next are the findings from representatives from ten countries -Australia, Flanders/Belgium, Canada, Lebanon, New Zealand, the Philippines, England, Scotland, Wales and United States of America -who were invited to give a short impression of maltreatment data collection methods and trends in their area. Each contribution presents country specific data on child maltreatment and is organized around 5 central topics: legal aspects; data collection methods and systems; maltreatment patterns; strengths and limitations; and future plans and directions.This section is followed by an overview of the recent activities and future plans in different countries worldwide. A short questionnaire was sent out to all members of ISPCAN’s Working Group on Child Maltreatment Data and its partner organizations. Informants from 23 countries responded to the survey. They came from five continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and Oceania. The findings are summarized and future directions for national data collection programs are discussed.The fifth section provides an executive summary of the findings related to the child parental discipline module of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of households in 35 middle and low income countries. The child discipline items in the module provide one of the few resources available to the field of child protection to help develop a more complete understanding of the prevalence of child disciplinary practices in a cross national context. The MICS3 implementation is also the first and most comprehensive effort to collect such data from middle and low income countries. The data are an important source of information for policy makers, health and social service delivery practitioners, researchers and the general public.Finally, an annotated bibliography incorporates research from over 35 countries and summarizes 89 journal articles and reports published from March 2008 through to the end of May 2010. The bibliography touches on a wide variety of topics, from the correlation between childhood maltreatment and obsessive-compulsive symptoms and beliefs later in life to attachment-based interventions for families where child maltreatment is a concern. It begins with cross-national studies and then follows with literature organized by country in alphabetic order. (Description from Source)
