Reporting Abuse Posted on March 19, 2007 Informing participants that abuse must be reported can bias your data and your sample, states Joel W. Grube (bio).

There are certain cases when you're conducting interviews where you obtain information that is reportable. Or you are required to report it. And one of those areas would be child abuse and sexual abuse. And fortunately for us we've interviewed several thousand kids now in this study, I guess, and we have not yet run into that as a problem. Which is fortunate.

But you do need to keep in mind if you're doing research in these areas that the, if you learn about something like child abuse you are required to report it. And you have to include that in your informed consent materials that the parents see so that they are aware ahead of time that it, what we tend to say is we won't be asking about child abuse or child sexual abuse, yet if information is inadvertently given to us that suggests that this may be happening we are required by law to report it. And it just goes on the consent form the parent signs. And so they are fully aware of it.

One thing is does do probably is help select out families where it's an issue. If a parent knows that you're going to be talking to their child about sex, and they know that there's been a problem in the family then they, I think, would be very unlikely to consent.

So you do get this kind of a selection bias. I don't know what you would do about it because you're required to put the information in there, and ethically you're required to report it if you see it. So that’s a problem.

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