Wanda Hunter

• MPH
• Managing Director at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (retired)

Objectives: To determine the type and severity of discipline practices in rural India and to identify risk and protective factors related to these practices. Methods: Five hundred mothers, ages 18-50, participated in face-to-face interviews as part of a cross-sectional, population-based survey. One of the mother's children was randomly selected...

Efforts to reduce the burden of injury and violence require a workforce that is knowledgeable and skilled in prevention. However, there has been no systematic process to ensure that professionals possess the necessary competencies. To address this deficiency, we developed a set of core competencies for public health practitioners in injury and viol...

The World Studies of Abuse in the Family Environment (WorldSAFE) designed and implemented a study of family violence--intimate partner violence and child abuse and neglect--using standardized methods to cover over 12,000 women in eighteen communities within five lesser-developed countries. The rationale, process and methods for developing the popul...

To conduct a formative and pilot impact evaluation of the State Technical Assessment Team (STAT) program, a visitation-based (visitatie) peer assessment program designed to enhance the organizational capacity of state health department injury prevention programs. The formative evaluation was based on observational, record review, and key informant...

Although the history of recognition of child abuse in Europe and North America extends over 40 years, recognition and data are lacking in other parts of the world. Cultural differences in child-rearing complicate cross-cultural studies of abuse. To ascertain rates of harsh and less-harsh parenting behavior in population-based samples. We used paral...

LONGSCAN is the largest continuing child maltreatment study funded by the US Administration on Children and Families. Of five local sites, only the Southeast site (n = 243) has completed 18 years of follow-up. This study assessed the effects of lifetime exposure to violence and trauma on young adult engagement in deviant behaviors. Exposure to viol...

Parenting books are a commonly used source of information on how to keep children and adolescents safe from injuries, the leading cause of death and disability for children aged 1 to 18 years. The content and the quality of the messages contained in these books have not been evaluated formally. The objective of this study was to determine the quant...

Child maltreatment remains a significant public health and social problem in the United States. Incidence data rely on substantiated reports of maltreatment known to official social service agencies. The objective of this study was to describe the epidemiologic features of child physical and sexual abuse, on the basis of maternal self-reports. Comp...

Suicidal ideation was examined among 1,051 8-year-old children identified as maltreated or at risk for maltreatment. Of these children, 9.9% reported suicidal ideation. Many variables, including maltreatment, had bivariate associations with suicidal ideation. Severity of physical abuse, chronicity of maltreatment, and the presence of multiple types...

In recent years violence against women has emerged as an important social problem in India. It has attracted the attention of a wide spectrum of agencies, from healthcare providers to law enforcement authorities. This study attempted to determine the characteristics and the magnitude of physical and psychological violence against women in rural Mah...

This paper describes the collaborative efforts of research teams from medical schools in India, Chile, Egypt, the Philippines, Brazil, and the United States to develop and implement a core protocol for household surveys on family violence and to conduct standardized training for field workers. Our objectives are to share successes and difficulties...

The literature documenting the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on health and injury does not provide a clear consensus on how to account for socioeconomic indicators in population and health outcome studies across countries. The World Studies of Abuse in the Family Environment (WorldSAFE) consortium conducted a series of population-based, m...

Although studies have documented the associations between Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and mental health, few have been done in developing countries. In this study, the association between IPV and mental health in women from different developing countries was established. Women, 15 to 49 years old with at least one child 18 years old or younger,...

This study examines the contribution of specific types of family violence exposure (e.g., victim vs. witness; physical vs. psychological) to aggressive and anxious/depressed problem behaviors in young (i.e., 6-year-old) at-risk children. This multisite prospective study of 682 children from four different regions of the country asked mothers and th...

This article examines mental health outcomes of children who have witnessed violence in their social environment and/or have been physically abused. Participants (n = 167) come from a longitudinal study on child maltreatment. Outcomes-including depression, anger, and anxiety--are measured by the Child Behavior Checklist and the Trauma Symptom Check...

To investigate whether living in a 3-generation household (grandmother-mother-child) is associated with fewer behavior problems and better cognitive development among preschool children of mothers who gave birth during adolescence and whether it protects children from the behavior and developmental problems associated with maltreatment and maternal...

LONGSCAN is a consortium of five longitudinal studies of the antecedents and consequences of child abuse and neglect with common measurement and data collection procedures. The consortium came together and developed interview protocols for measuring etiologic and outcome variables related to child maltreatment in response to a call from the Nationa...

Most research on the effect of father figures in the home on the incidence of child maltreatment has been cross-sectional and has focused on sexual abuse. This prospective study's purpose is to determine if the presence of a father surrogate in the home affects the risk of a subsequent child maltreatment report. In a longitudinal sample of at-risk...

The methodological, legal, and ethical issues related to questioning children about their maltreatment experiences in research studies are complex. A review of the literature was conducted examining what studies to date have directly asked children about victimization and how study investigators dealt with the human participants issues related to s...

The conduct of research in the area of child abuse and neglect may be one of the most difficult tasks in social science research. One requirement for valid research is knowledge of the type and amount of exposure. Official reports have been demonstrated to provide a serious undercount of the frequency of maltreatment, and parent report is of limite...

To describe maternal discipline of children in at-risk families and to determine factors associated with disciplinary practices. Cross-sectional survey. At-risk families in North Carolina followed up in a longitudinal study of child maltreatment. Maternal caregivers of 7- to 9-year-old children with factors at birth that placed them at risk. A tota...

The National Research Council (1993) has issued an urgent call for theory-based, longitudinal research to examine the antecedents and consequences of child maltreatment. Many of the concerns raised by the National Research Council are addressed by LONGSCAN (LONGitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect), a consortium including a coordinating cent...

Social capital describes the benefits that are derived from personal social relationships (within families and communities) and social affiliations. This investigation examined the extent to which social capital is associated with positive developmental and behavioral outcomes in high-risk preschool children. A cross-sectional case-control analysis...

The National Research Council (1993) has issued an urgent call for theory-based, longitudinal research to examine the antecedents and consequences of child maltreatment. Many of the concerns raised by the National Research Council are addressed by LONGSCAN (LONGitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect), a consortium including a coordinating cent...

The Consortium of Longitudinal Studies in Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) brings together five long-term studies of child maltreatment that utilize common procedures and instrumentation. Although each site is a separate project, collaboration permits exploration of additional issues and replication of findings. This paper provides brief reports...

This paper describes the development and initial validation of the Intervention Stressors Inventory (ISI), a new scale designed to measure the level of stress sexually abused children experience as a result of societal intervention. Estimates of the relative stress level of various interventions were obtained from 98 professionals; a police intervi...

While conducting a prospective study of 100 sexually abused children, we found a much higher rate of out-of-home placement than has been previously described for child maltreatment. This study was designed to determine which factors were most influential in predicting the placement experiences of this cohort. The children, ages 6-17 years, were rec...

Reply by the current authors to the comments made by Carl W. Christensen (see record 2013-42942-016) on the original article (see record 2013-42939-006). The authors appreciate Christensen's letter supporting our research and agree with his assessment of the need for more sensitive and empathetic interventions with non-abusing mothers in cases of i...

The level of maternal support to incest victims following disclosure was found to be more closely related to perpetrator than to child characteristics. Lack of maternal support was significantly associated with foster placement and higher psychopathology scores in a clinical interview. Evidence is presented challenging the validity of maternal beha...

Examining the psychologic risks of court and related interventions on child sexual abuse victims. A prospective cohort study with follow-up at 5 months. Eleven county social service departments in central North Carolina. 100 sexually abused children, ages 6 to 17 years, were recruited from consecutive referrals by social service departments; 75 com...

Concerned about the possible detrimental impact of the investigative process and court proceedings on child victims of sexual abuse, many child advocates have proposed extensive evidentiary and procedural revisions of the court process. As part of a long-term study of the effects of child sexual abuse on the victims' mental health, we observed chil...

RESEARCH on parent perceptions of infant temperament and child maladjustment has evolved from an initial interpretation of parent reports as objective, veridical descriptions of the child to an interpretation of parent reports as social perceptions that reflect both objective qualities of children and personality characteristics of parents (Bates 1...

Recherche sur les correlations entre les caracteristiques de 164 meres et leurs evaluations de la psychopathologie de leur enfant avant son entree a l'ecole primaire (personnalite et comportement des meres ont ete estimes depuis la periode de leur grossesse)

Findings of a longitudinal study indicated that maternal demographic and psychological characteristics were significantly correlated with maternal behavior at infants' fourth and twelfth months. Data were again collected on mother and child during the kindergarten year to determine the stability of maternal characteristics and to test the hypothesi...