[Incidence of child abuse. Evaluation and criticism of information sources and results]

In a 500,000 inhabitants French area, the authors studied how school and social services perceived the problem of child abuse, what were their definitions for it and the cases they had reported in 1979, on the basis of these definitions. Definitions were homogeneous from one service to another. However, facing concrete situations, several services restricted the field of child abuse and considered only severe active physical injury; facing the same cases various services have different opinions. Nevertheless, with respect to the large number of services studied, the incidence of child abuse could be estimated: at least one out of 150 children under 6 years suffers each year from more or less severe maltreatment. Moreover, this investigation gave interesting information concerning the way these services work in the field of child abuse.