Bright MA, et al. - In this retrospective study, researchers examined the temporal association between school report card release and incidence rates (IRs) of physical abuse. This study of report card release dates and state child welfare agency–verified incidents of child physical abuse across an entire state performed including 1943 cases of abuse revealed no association of the release of report cards on Monday through Thursday with increased incidence rates of child physical abuse the same day or the day after the release; however, there appeared nearly a 4-fold increase in the incidence rate of verified child physical abuse reports on Saturdays after a Friday report card release. Findings thus suggested an actionable, policy-level strategy for school districts that may decrease incidents of child physical abuse linked to report cards.

Methods

• Researchers performed this retrospective study via reviewing calls to a state child abuse hotline and school report card release dates across a single academic year in Florida.
• Collection of data was done in a 265-day window from September 8, 2015, to May 30, 2016, in the 64 of 67 Florida counties with report card release dates available (16 960 days).
• All children aged 5 to 11 years for whom calls were made were included as participants.
• In the study period, they identified a total of 1943 verified cases of physical abuse in the 64 counties.
• Analysis of data was done from October 2017 through May 2018.
• They assessed daily counts of calls to a child abuse hotline that later resulted in agency-verified incidents of child physical abuse across a single academic year by county as the main outcome and measures.

Results

• For children aged 5 to 11 years, 167,906 calls came in to the child abuse hotline during the academic year; 17.8% (n = 29 887) of these calls were suspected incidents of physical abuse, and 2017 (6.7%) of these suspected incidents were later verified as cases of physical abuse before excluding the 3 counties with no release dates available.
• Among the 1943 cases included in the analysis (58.9% males [n = 1145]; mean [SD] age, 7.69 [1.92] years), a higher occurrence of calls resulting in verified reports of child physical abuse was noted on Saturdays after a Friday report card release compared with Saturdays that do not follow a Friday report card release (IR ratio, 3.75; 95% CI, 1.21-11.63;P = .02).
• Researchers observed no significant association of report card release with IRs for any other days of the week.