The limitations of the study focus on the use of a single site and the lack of a comparison site. In addition,
due to the nature of record keeping in some of the agencies, it was not always possible to know that all of
the cases from the time period were represented in the sampling frame. One example of this complexity is
found in the Prosecutor’s office. It is also possible that one might cite the expansions of multi-disciplinary
teams and Child Advocacy Centers in the mid to late 1990s may limit the relevance of findings from data
collected in the early 1990s when such teams were less prevalent. However, multi-disciplinary teams were
in existence in the jurisdiction studied. In addition, the findings reported herein suggest regardless of the
collaborative structure in place, it is the nature of the communication that determines the effectiveness of
collaborative efforts.
The study strengths include the care with which cases were tracked across systems, the thoroughness
of case discovery in each system, the matching process and the depth of information collected about the
case. By focusing on one site, the investigators were able to gain a thorough knowledge of all of the
possible case pathways and then to search effectively for all possible connections. This study represents
perhaps one of the most thorough cross-agency tracking studies conducted to date.