An Analysis of the Significance that Socioeconomic Factors have on the Total Number of Child Abuse Reports in each of the 88 counties in the State of Ohio

Michael Peter Schlessigner, The College of Wooster

Abstract

This study is based on multiple regression analysis to identify the socioeconomic factors which contribute to the variance in the dependent variable, the number of reported child abuses in each respective county in the State of Ohio. The data was collected from the 1983 County and City data book. The results of this study suggests that these socioeconomic variables used only account for a small variance in the dependent variable. In the first regression the independent variables only account for 12% of the variance in the dependent variable REPORTS which is interpreted as the total number of child abuses per 100,000 population in each respective county in the State of Ohio. The second regression suggested that the independent variables only account for 9% of the variance in the dependent variable, which was interpreted as the total number of child abuses per 100,000 households. These results suggest that the phenomenon of child abuse is only explained by socioeconomic factors in a small way. Thus, there must be other reasons why child abuse occurs to the degree that it does in the United States.