The Child Sexual abuse Data Summary Form: A Demographic Checklist for Clinicians and Researchers

Treatment programs researching child sexual abuse need a reliable way to establish a demographic database, especially because data collectors have different levels of training. To address this need, a data summary form was developed and an interrater reliability study was completed. Kappa analyses were run on 50 items for 30 different cases read by two raters. Six of the items fell below the .41 cutoff rate and were excluded from the final form. Seven additional items with sufficient reliability were eliminated because they were linked to the excluded items and no longer made sense on their own. The resulting 37-item form facilitates interagency subject pooling and is made available to treatment agencies for gathering child sexual abuse demographic information.