confirmed maltreatment report was based on a variable in the original NCANDS data. In those instances in which a child had multiple CPS reports open for investigation at the same time and during the same year, only the first confirmed maltreatment report was counted. Recognizing the possibility of over counting of first confirmed maltreatments is vital for ensuring precision in the estimates because allowing individual children to have multiple first confirmed maltreatment reports in the same year would dramatically inflate estimates, an issue we return to later.
