The Role of Race and Severity of Abuse in Teachers' Recognition or Reporting of Child Abuse

Abstract

In the United States, reported child abuse rates vary dramatically with race. We employed a scenario methodology to examine whether teachers, whose professional obligations include reporting suspected instances of abuse, exhibit bias in evaluating a possibly abused child. Each teacher (180 White, 180 Black, and 180 Hispanic) read one of six profiles about a hypothetical elementary school student and then expressed extent of agreement with either a statement that the child is being physically abused or a statement that the child should be reported as being physically abused. Within the set of profiles, race of the child and severity of abuse were manipulated. When the child in the profile was severely abused, responses for the two judgmental tasks were comparable. However, when the child was moderately abused, teachers asked whether the child was abused gave higher responses than their counterparts who were asked whether the child should be reported. No effects of race of the child or race of the teacher were observed.