Article

Perception of child maltreatment remains an area of child maltreatment infrequently examined despite its relevance to understanding risks of maltreatment of vulnerable children. Apart from its relationship to childhood maltreatment (Goldsmith, Freyd, & DePrince, 2009), perception is of par-ticular interest to understanding maltreatment because of its relevance to perpetration or propensity to perpetrate mal-treatment (Madu, Idemudia, & Jegede, 2002; Varia, Abidin, & Dass, 1996). Yet, knowledge about perception of maltreat-ment is sparse. Although many factors may be attributed to this sparse knowledge, including variability in legal and con-ceptual definitions of maltreatment across regions, prolifera-tion of terms related to maltreatment, and inconsistent examination of abusive behaviors across studies (Baker, 2009; Riddle & Aponte, 1999), the majority of existing mea-sures focus primarily on direct accounts of maltreatment or retrospective accounts of childhood maltreatment and few on direct measurement of perception of maltreatment. Although several measures are used to operationalize cur-rent or retrospective experience of child maltreatment, those that measure perception of maltreatment are sparse and pri-marily framed from perspectives of respondents in devel