At home when their child was 5 years old, interviewers asked parents about parental conflict, discipline practices, exposure to violence, and possible child abuse across two time frames: 1–4 and 4–5 years old. After discussing these issues, interviewers made ratings about physical harm, parental conflict, exposure to violence, and discipline (for information on interrater reliability, see Deater-Deckard et al., 1998). Interviewers rated the likelihood that the child had been physically harmed (with codes ranging from “definitely not” to “authorities involved”). Children were classified as physically harmed if the interviewer rated the likelihood of physical harm as probable or as having involved child welfare authorities in either time frame.
