Crimes Against Children Research Center
Phase 6

This is a grant to University of New Hampshire, Crimes Against Children Research Center and includes the following components. The first project investigates the impact of media in child victimization on children who are victims and their families. To accomplish this, media reports on child victimization cases throughout the country will be analyzed and for several communities, high profile cases will be compared with cases that did not receive significant media attention. The research proposes to examine four areas: the measurement of publicity, the predictors of high publicity, the relationship of publicity to outcomes and to assess shield statutes. To accomplish these objectives there will be a national sample of high profile cases. Next, a detailed case analysis on high profile cases in select communities will be conducted. The second project is the Youth Internet Victimization Prevention Survey. This survey will focus on a national sample of youth who use the internet who are exposed to unwanted sexual solicitations and pornography. The research will examine the effect of this exposure on those youth. It will compare the results with the earlier Youth Internet Safety Survey. The second survey will focus on factors that increase risk while on line. The third project is the Developmental Victimization Survey. This research is to improve the assessment of the causal processes involving the antecedents and consequences of childhood victimization and understand better the impact of contextual factors. The goal is to disentangle the impact of abuse from the other issues in the lives of these youth. The fourth project is to test and refine a child self report instrument to assess the neglect of children. This research will further develop the Multidimensional Neglect Scale (MNS). This instrument will be placed in a Multi-Media Computer with programming to reflect the age and gender of the child. This research builds on earlier research in developing self-report studies to assess abuse and neglect. Two versions will be developed with one for younger children ages 5 to 9 and the other for older children ages 10 to 15. This reflects the differences in the verbal and developmental levels of the youth. NCA/NCF