Publikationen

Measuring risk factors in Germany: difficulties encountered and lessons learned during the design of a national prevalence study

Brand, Christian/Eickhorst, Andreas/Lang, Katrin/Liel, Christoph/Neumann, Anna/Renner, Ilona/Schreier, Andrea/Sann, Alexandra
Measuring risk factors in Germany: difficulties encountered and lessons learned during the design of a national prevalence study.
Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents (EUSARF) Kopenhagen "Kongress." 03.09.2014
Objectives: Early exposure to psychosocial burdens has been identified as a potential risk factor for child abuse and neglect. However, in Germany there is a recognised lack of nationally representative epidemiological evidence of the prevalence of psychosocial burdens. Such data is urgently needed to better understand the needs of families with small children and to plan prevention and intervention efforts within the German federal action plan for early prevention. Method: A large-scale national prevalence study focussing on families with children 0 to 3 years of age is planned for 2015. A risk inventory has been developed and tested in three pilot studies: (1) a limited version of the inventory has been piloted as a module of an established national survey of families (n interviewed>10.000); (2) the full inventory has been trialled in a local survey where recruitment was done via population registry data (n sampled>10.000); (3) and also in another local survey where recruitment was done via paediatricians (n target>1.500). The different trials also tested a variety of data collection modes (telephone, paper/pencil, web-based). Results: The conceptual development of both the risk inventory and the national prevalence study will be presented as well as the key results of the pilot studies. Among those, our main focus was on the difficulties encountered and lessons learned concerning one of the main tasks of the national prevalence study: reaching all social strata (in particular difficult to reach socially deprived groups) and asking sensitive questions in surveys. Effects of different data collection modes have also been observed and will be discussed.