Child Abuse Experts Disagree About the Threshold for Mandated Reporting

Abstract

Though reasonable suspicion serves as the standard threshold for when to report suspected child abuse, there is little guidance how to interpret the term. To examine how experts on child abuse interpret reasonable suspicion using 2 probability frameworks. Anonymous survey of clinical and research experts on child abuse. Responses on ordinal and visual analog scales quantifying the probability needed for "suspicion of child abuse" to rise to reasonable suspicion. A total of 81 of 117 experts completed the survey (69% response rate, mean age 47 years, 69% female). On both the ordinal probability scale (rank order on a differential diagnosis) and the estimated probability scale (1% to 99% likelihood), experts demonstrated wide variability in defining reasonable suspicion, with no statistically significant differences found for age, race, gender, professional training, seniority, or prior education on reasonable suspicion. This study found no consensus in how experts on child abuse interpret reasonable suspicion.