Research on child maltreatment is essential to generate new knowledge and inform advances in policy and practice. However, researchers must comply with a range of legal duties to survey participants. These duties are complex, vary across jurisdictions, and are difficult for all researchers and institutions to navigate. Prof Mathews has published a new article on the legal duties of researchers to protect participants in child maltreatment research . This new article provides

This month we published an important paper that examines the issue of participant distress in child maltreatment surveys. The paper, led by Professor Mathews, includes key co-authors from Canada as well as other members of the ACMS team. In this paper we address the tension between the need for maltreatment research with the ethical obligation to prevent distress and ensure research beneficence. A thorough review of the literature shows that frequency and severity of particip

The Protocol Paper for the Australian Child Maltreatment Study has been published today in BMJ Open (IF 2.49). The paper provides a background to the study, a summary of its aims and objectives as well as an overview of the study design and methodology. The paper was peer-reviewed and published under open access restrictions. It can be accessed by anyone free of charge by clicking here . The citation for the paper is: Mathews B, Pacella R, Dunne M, et alThe Australian Child

The accurate and valid measurement of the prevalence of child maltreatment can be difficult but is is vitally needed. A new systematic review addressing this issue has just been published in PlosOne by Prof Ben Mathews, Prof Rosana Pacella, and Prof Michael Dunne, from the ACMS team, along with their colleagues Marko Simunovic and Cicely Marston. This review makes a significant contribution to the field at large and formed part of the preparatory work for the ACMS. The system