Determining the factors of child abuse and its rate during the corona era in preschool children

Child abuse is an acute social issue that has negative effects on the individual and society. The present study tries to determine the rate of child abuse during the Corona era according to possible related factors such as economic-social status and family structure, parents' mental health and child's demographic characteristics (parent's gender, child's gender, number of children, child's rank). review

This research is causal-comparative. The statistical population includes parents of pre-primary children in Tehran, 471 of whom were selected based on the cluster sampling method from 9 regions in the north, south, east, west and center of Tehran. To measure the variables of the research, child abuse questionnaire (ICAST-P), socio-economic status questionnaire (SES), Elson et al.'s Family Adaptation and Cohesion Assessment Scale (FACES-III) were used to assess the family structure, parental mental health questionnaire (GHQ) was used. To test the hypotheses, multivariate regression was used using SPSS version 24 software.

Based on the obtained results, with the increase in the socio-economic status, the child abuse score decreases significantly by 0.54 points (p-value<0.001) and by adjusting the effect of parents' mental health, there is a negative relationship between the socio-economic status and the child. There is harassment. The results by adjusting the effect of parents' mental health show a negative relationship between family structure and child abuse. In other words, with an increase in the family level score, the child abuse score decreases by 0.047 units, although this decrease is not statistically significant (pvalue = 0.068).

Based on the findings, this issue requires the attention of the authorities to prevent the negative consequences of child abuse. It also emphasizes the general education of parents and preschool teachers at the community level in the field of children's rights and needs and special attention to preschool children.