Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 1421–1435 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Child Abuse & Neglect Child maltreatment rates assessed in a national household survey of caregivers and youth David Finkelhor a,∗ , Jennifer Vanderminden a , Heather Turner a , Sherry Hamby b , Anne Shattuck a a Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA b Sewanee, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 29 January 2014 Received in revised form 23 April 2014 Accepted 8 May 2014 Available online 20 June 2014 Keywords: Neglect Emotional abuse Physical abuse Sexual abuse Poly-victimization a b s t r a c t This paper reports on national estimates for past year child maltreatment from a national household survey conducted in 2011. It also discusses the validity of such estimates in light of other available epidemiology. The Second National Survey of Children Exposed to Vio- lence obtained rates based on 4,503 children and youth from interviews with caregivers about the children ages 0–9 and with the youth themselves for ages 10–17. The past year rates for physical abuse by caregivers were 4.0% for all sample children, emotional abuse by caregivers 5.6%, sexual abuse by caregivers 0.1%, sexual abuse by caregivers and non- caregivers 2.2%, neglect 4.7% and custodial interference 1.2%. Overall, 12.1% of the sample experienced at least one of these forms of maltreatment. Twenty-three percent of the mal- treated children or 2.8% of the full sample experienced 2 or more forms of maltreatment. Some authority (teacher, police, medical personnel or counselor) was aware of consider- able portions of most maltreatment, which suggests the potential for intervention. Many of the study’s estimates were reasonable in light of other child maltreatment epidemiological studies, but comparisons about emotional abuse and neglect were problematic because of ambiguity about definitions. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The idea of measuring child maltreatment through household or population surveys has continued to intrigue researchers for many reasons. It offers the possibility of uncovering and measuring the maltreatment that does not come to the attention of professionals or the child welfare system. It allows the tracking of trends over time uncontaminated by changes in administrative or clinical practices. It also permits more direct measurement of various risk factors and effects, particularly through a comparison of maltreated children with a representative sample of non-maltreated ones. Many household and general population surveys have been conducted of adults reporting retrospectively on child maltreatment (for reviews, see Stoltenborgh, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Van Ijzendoorn, & Alink, 2013; Stoltenborgh, Van Ijzendoorn, Euser, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2011), but these findings suffer from not being contemporaneous and thus a very remote indicator for measuring change. Other general population surveys have been conducted with adolescents (Barth, Bermetz, Heim, Trelle, & Tonia, 2013), and although more contemporaneous, they do not provide information on the crucially important preadolescent years. Still others have surveyed parents directly about their children’s experiences ∗ Corresponding author address: Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 126 Horton Social Science Center, 20 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.05.005 0145-2134/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.