Missing Data
Each data source used in this study contains a small degree of missing data. Our approach to handling missing information varies slightly depending on the source of data and reasons for missing information. In the administrative data we treat missing maltreatment records in CANTS for 51 cases (11%) as a lack of evidence of maltreatment and include these cases in the study sample. With the self-reported data from the Midwest study at waves one and two, missing represents the number of participants missing any individual item, except for the summary measures that rely on multiple items. For these summary measures, we treat as missing only those cases for which we had no valid answers to any relevant items.