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Physical abuse among high school students. Prevalence and correlation with other health behaviors
D E Nelson1, G K Higginson, J A Grant-Worley
1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Md, USA.
Objective:
To better understand the epidemiology of physical abuse among adolescents.
Design:
School-based survey of students in grades 9 through 12.
Setting:
Twenty-five schools throughout Oregon in 1993.
Main Outcome Measures:
Prevalence of ever being physically abused, prevalence of most recent occurrence of physical abuse, and correlation of physical abuse with high-risk health behaviors.
Results:
Of the 1957 respondents, 31.5% reported having ever been physically abused, with female subjects (34.6%) more likely than male subjects (28.0%) to have ever been abused. Overall, 3.7% of students had been physically abused in the past week, 7.8% in the past month, and 16.3% in the past year. Based on multivariate models, students physically abused in the past year were more likely than students who had never been physically abused to engage in a variety of high-risk behaviors; these included weapon carrying (odds ratio, 1.9), suicidal ideation (odds ratio, 2.1), cigarette smoking (odds ratio, 1.8), cocaine use (odds ratio, 3.2), or multiple sexual partners (odds ratio, 1.9).
Conclusions:
Physical abuse, an important problem among high school students, is correlated with many high-risk behaviors. Using consistent definitions, periodic surveys of children about physical abuse and other types of violent behavior are needed to provide better estimates of the extent of these problems.