Peer-reviewed article
Prevention of violence against children in the home: an overview of reviews protocol
Jorge A. Cuartas, Dana Charles McCoy, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Michelle Beth Bass, Ana Salazar et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This is a protocol for an overview of reviews that will examine evidence on interventions to prevent violence against children in the home. The authors plan to search for and analyse reviews of universal and selective interventions published since 2000, looking at outcomes like physical, sexual, or psychological violence and neglect. The overview will assess the quality of reviews and synthesize findings to identify effective prevention strategies and gaps in the current evidence base.
Key points
- The overview will focus on both universal interventions (for all families) and selective interventions (for at-risk families)
- Outcomes include direct measures of violence against children and risk factors such as parenting stress and attitudes towards violence
- Studies will be limited to reviews of quantitative research published after 2000
- The review quality will be assessed using AMSTAR 2
- The protocol is registered in PROSPERO to ensure transparency
Limitations
This is a protocol document describing a planned overview of reviews rather than completed research, so it provides no empirical findings on intervention effectiveness. The actual evidence synthesis and conclusions will only be available when the overview is completed.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Violence against children (VAC) in the home, or by household members, is a widespread problem with devastating and costly consequences for individuals and societies. In the past two decades, much research has been dedicated to the prevention of VAC in the home, in particular, in low- and- middle-income countries, but there are few systematic examinations of the growing body of literature. We present a protocol for an overview of reviews to synthesize the evidence from recent reviews on the effectiveness and characteristics of both universal and selective interventions to prevent VAC in the home or by household members. METHODS: We will conduct an overview of reviews of quantitative studies of universal and selective interventions to prevent VAC in the home published after 2000. Our outcomes will be VAC in the home (e.g., physical, sexual, or psychological violence or neglect) and drivers or direct risk factors for VAC (e.g., beliefs or attitudes towards VAC, parenting stress). We will search for reviews in multiple databases using controlled vocabularies and keywords. We will use the AMSTAR 2 to assess the quality of reviews and will extract information on outcomes, main results, and geographic distribution of primary studies, among other data. We will conduct a narrative synthesis of the findings. DISCUSSION: The proposed overview will provide timely evidence on effective strategies to prevent VAC in the home and will identify the key strengths and limitations of the current body of evidence on this topic. In doing so, we will inform future research, policy, and practice aimed at building effective strategies to prevent VAC globally. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42022304784.