This symposium will consist of five presentations, which focus on answering questions about child outcomes via the use of new analytic methods, including latent classification analysis, propensity score matching, multi-level modeling, and Poisson regression. The first paper addresses children's safety among families with concurrent domestic violence and child maltreatment, with particular interest in the relationship between familial and organizational characteristics, and repeated child maltreatment re-reports. The second paper focuses on children who were in foster care at baseline. A person centered analytic technique is used to define classes of youth who are distinguished by their differing experiences in foster care. The third paper examines the recurrence of maltreatment among children whose parents have an identified substance abuse problem. Propensity score matching is used to create a more precise comparison of outcomes for those children whose parents did and did not receive substance abuse treatment. THe fourth paper examines the use of Family Group Decision Making and assesses the subsequent services and case outcomes. The final paper examines placement moves for children in out-of-home care who have clinical behavior problems. Poisson regression is used to estimate the non-continuous count data as well as the correlation between time in care nad placement moves.

The analyses are all conducted on the NSCAW restricted release data set available through the Cornell National Data Archive for Child Abuse and Neglect.