LONGSCAN Publications

         

LONGSCAN is a consortium of research studies operating under common by-laws and procedures. It was initiated in 1990 with grants from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect through a coordinating center at the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center and five satellite sites. Each site is conducting a separate and unique research project on the etiology and impact of child maltreatment. While each project can stand alone on its own merits, through the use of common assessment measures, similar data collection methods and schedules, and pooled analyses, LONGSCAN is a collaborative effort.

The coordinated LONGSCAN design permits a comprehensive exploration of many critical issues in child abuse and neglect on a combined sample of sufficient size for unprecedented statistical power and flexibility. Built into the design is also the ability to replicate and extend findings across a variety of ethnic, social and economic subgroups.

The goal of LONGSCAN is to follow the children and their families until the children themselves become young adults. Comprehensive assessments of children, their parents, and their teachers are scheduled to occur at child ages 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16, and 18. Maltreatment data is collected from multiple sources, including record reviews, at least every two years. Yearly telephone interviews allow the sites to track families and assess yearly service utilization and life events. The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) makes a restricted dataset available to members of the research community who meet eligibility criteria and agree to the requirements of the data license.

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Twenty years ago, LONGSCAN, supported with grants from the Children’s Bureau, was launched at five sites across the country. LONGSCAN continued to interview children, their caretakers and their teachers for two decades, following the children from early childhood into young adulthood. The data from these interviews has been used in over one hundred presentations, and over 120 peer reviewed publications, and continues to be used in new analyses.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Children’s Bureau, and the LONGSCAN Investigators recognized the need for the many research findings from LONGSCAN to reach a broader audience than the scientific community - including professionals who work to help families and children, policy makers who make budget decisions or pass laws affecting families and children, advocates for children and families, and communities and parents throughout the United States. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation met this need by funding From Science to Practice.

From Science to Practice provides each LONGSCAN site with support to convene a meeting to discuss its most important findings with a broad range of key stakeholders, who may include representatives from Public Health, Health and Human Services and DSS in particular, the legal system, mental health, child advocacy organizations such as Prevent Child Abuse, and adults who were either in theLONGSCAN study as children or were involved with child protective services as children. Each group will develop a set of policy and practice recommendations based on the LONGSCAN findings discussed. These findings will be disseminated regionally, and will be synthesized for use at a sixth meeting to be convened in Washington DC in 2013.

Put succinctly, the purpose of From Science to Practice is to assure that the results of LONGSCAN are widely disseminated, understandable, and of real use to the people and systems working to help families and children live safer, happier and healthier lives. For more information, contact Elizabeth Dawes Knight.

 

Latest DDCF Grant News

LONGSCAN findings, practice and policy implications for child safety, permanency and well-being, developed with the input of key stakeholders at six meetings held throughout the US. Click here to view findings.

From Science to PracticeIn Other News:

On May 3, 2013,  Investigators from the LONGSCAN project presented a congressional briefing co-sponsored by Senators Burr and Alexander to  HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) committee staffers.  The briefing included select LONGSCAN  findings and related general practice and policy recommendations generated at the six regional stakeholder meetings (see links to handouts below).

NC Press Release - Researchers from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported recently on the most significant findings from a twenty-five year study on families and children. The Family Child Study was initiated in North Carolina with the primary goal of improving the quality of policy and practice in order to promote child and family well-being based on sound evidence from the study. Read more...

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | UNC IPRC |