Ethnicity in child maltreatment research: a replication of Behl et al.'s content analysis

This study examines the use of ethnicity in 489 empirical research articles published in three major child maltreatment specialty journals from 1999 to 2002. Of the American samples, 12.5% focus on ethnicity, 76.2% report the ethnic composition of participants, and 33.8% use ethnicity of participants in analyses. Ethnicity has a significant effect in 52.3% of articles in which it was used in analyses, suggesting its importance as a variable in a wide range of studies. African Americans and Native Americans are underrepresented in research samples. These findings indicate more attention to ethnicity in American research than Behl, Crouch, May, Valente, and Conyngham's 2001 study might suggest but also highlight the need for continued expansion in focusing on, reporting, and using ethnicity in research.