Profile Analysis of Physical Abuse Experiences Among School-Aged Children Who Are Involved with Child Protective Services: Evidence from Korea

Background: This study analyzed the abuse characteristics of school-aged children who experienced physical abuse and involved with  the Korean child protective services (CPS). It is well known that various sub-type or multi-type abuse exist when children experience child maltreatment. This study is part of a Korean study tracking the characteristics of child and adolescent abuse. While the general information on child abuse has been acquired through reports by the CPS in Korea, there have been very rare attempts to explore  the patterns of abuse experienced by children and adolescents. The three main aims of this study were 1) to explore the profile groups of school-aged children who have experienced abuse, 2) to examine the differences of profile groups by gender, and 3) to examine the internalization/externalization problem of each group.

Method: For this study, 5,619 cases substantiated as abuse were selected from 10,943 cases incase management system of the Korean CPS between 2012 and 2014. Among them, 913 cases substantiated  as physical abuse on school-aged boys and girls (8–12 years old) were used for analysis. The information extracted to explore  the patterns of abuse was presence or absence of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect; abuse frequency; and abuse severity. For internalization and externalization, the study used the information CPS worker assessed at the time of investigation . Latent class analysis and  test were used for analysis.

Results: Restuls yielded that three profile groups were best fit for the data base on the abuse characteristics of 913 children: Group 1 (43.2%) experienced severe physical abuse accompanied by emotional,” Group 2 (15.7%) experienced moderate level of physical abuse accompanied by emotional abuse and neglect.. Finally, Group 3 (41.1%) was characterized as experiencing relatively less severe physical abuse with no co-occurring abuse. The percentages of children with the internalization problem were 33.5%, 27.3%, and 24.6% in Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and externalization was similar but not statistically significant. We could also find gender differences in profile analyses based on physical abuse experiences. 

Implications: These results correspond with the existing discussions that there exists variability under one category of “physical abuse”. The influence of emotional abuse was noteworthy. For example, the level of severity of physical abuse was highly correlated with existence of emotional abuse. Gender differences in the pattern were largely detected in the percentage of emotional abuse experience between male and female adolescents. Based on the results, theoretical as well as practical implication for classifying complex experiences of children’s maltreatment will be discussed.