Hierarchies of child maltreatment types at different perceived severity levels in European Americans, Korean Americans, and Koreans

The main goal of this study was to compare differences within and between ethnic groups in their perspectives on what constituted child maltreatment and how severe (extreme, moderate, or mild) they perceived different types of maltreatment to be. A sample of 150 European American, Korean American, and Korean college students completed a survey asking them to give examples of parental behaviors that would be considered by people in their culture to be extreme, moderate, and mild forms of child abuse. The responses were coded for maltreatment types (e.g., physical, psychological, neglect) and subtypes (e.g., hitting). The frequency with which different types of maltreatment were considered abusive varied within ethnicity based on designated level of severity. These findings suggest that arbitrarily categorizing a child’s maltreatment experience into a rigid, pre-determined hierarchy of maltreatment types without considering the severity of different forms of maltreatment can result in overlooking valuable information. Moreover, fewer European Americans than Koreans identified psychological aggression as an extremely abusive type of abuse as well as in their total examples of abuse. European Americans placed greater emphasis on physical aggression, whereas Koreans focused more on psychological aggression and neglect. In perceptions of abuse, Korean Americans were more similar to European Americans than to Koreans. We recommend that when evaluating level of child abuse, investigators and researchers should take into account the different levels of severity within each type of maltreatment and the behaviors that are considered normative within different cultures.