Adjusting for Underreporting of Child Protective Services Involvement in the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study and Assessing Its Empirical Implications Through Illustrative Analyses of Young Adult Disconnection

Child protective services (CPS) involvement is common among American families; more than a third of all children and more than half of Black children experience at least one investigation by age 18. However, studying the causes and consequences of CPS involvement is challenging. National data on children involved with CPS lack a counterfactual group, and state-level administrative data often miss key family and child factors. The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study provides detailed data on CPS involvement and family and child factors but relies on self-reports, which may underreport involvement. We develop a Bayesian method to correct for this underreporting and estimate the probability of CPS involvement by a given age. We then apply the adjusted measure in empirical analyses of young adult disconnection and compare the estimates with those produced using the unadjusted measure. Results suggest that CPS involvement may be associated with a higher likelihood of disconnection in young adulthood. We find differences in the estimates produced by each measure, suggesting that empirical estimates based on unadjusted self-reports may lead to erroneous substantive conclusions regarding the associations between CPS involvement, potential precursors, and subsequent consequences.