ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool - Retrospective Questionnaire

Abstract

In 2009, ISPCAN collaborated with UNICEF, the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children, the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and the World Health Organization to develop the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tools (ICAST). The ICAST is a measure to assess child abuse prevalence and frequency, and is used worldwide in various countries. There are three versions of the ICAST tool: a child version for ages 11-18 (ICAST-C), a parent version (ICAST-P) and a young adults’ retrospective version (ICAST-R). The questionnaires and manuals were updated in 2015, and are currently available in English, Russian and Spanish. ICAST-R (Retrospective Questionnaire) is a 32-item measure for young adults to assess child abuse prevalence and frequency. This version of the ICAST is for adults who have recently become independent (aged 18-24 years), and was developed to ask them about their violent experiences that occurred before they were 18 years old by adults and/or peers. This tool is used with young adults to measure the prevalence of physical, emotional and sexual child abuse, and neglect in childhood by any perpetrator. The tool can be completed by the participants themselves or by a practitioner. The ICAST-R was validated in 2009 by child maltreatment experts from 28 countries. They came to a consensus that the tool translates clearly and has satisfactory properties for adoption as a survey tool to estimate prevalence and describe perpetrators and other contextual aspects of child abuse. (CVR Abstract)