And, in contrast, researchers who conduct studies of physically abused children recruited through protective services, the judicial system, or from medical referrals often do not have access to specific information on the type, severity, and number of physical injuries suffered by children or fail to collect such data. Accordingly, we do not have a very clear picture of the actual physical and psychological impact on children of being physically abused and what characteristics of physical abuse are responsible for the greatest amount of morbidity in children and adolescents. To aid in such basic needed research, standards for more adequate description of abusive injuries are needed. In an effort to promote greater consensus on research definitions of child maltreatment, the Federal Interagency Research Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect has convened a series of conferences focusing on definitional issues in the various forms of child maltreatment. In a November 1995 meeting, a workgroup on definitional issues in physical abuse took the position that the occurrence of a physical injury was the key element in criteria for physical abuse.
Several injury coding systems exist, such as the International Classification of Diseases.
One of the tasks of this current meeting will be to assess their adequacy for describing injuries due to physical abuse. The purpose of this meeting is to examine these issues related to describing and coding abusive physical injuries and the need for additional research on abusive injury description, coding, and consequences. The goal of this meeting, together with follow-up efforts, is to reach consensus on a set of recommendations to the physical abuse field on how to describe and code physical injuries in child abuse cases. Conduct of the Meeting We intend this meeting to be a general discussion meeting rather than a paper presentation meeting. We hope to draw on the considerable accumulated wisdom of the meeting participants for discussion of agenda topics.