The incidence of infant physical abuse in Alaska

OBJECTIVES: To determine the incidence of and risk factors associated with infant (< 1 year of age) physical abuse in Alaska. METHODS: A population-based retrospective cohort study for the 1994-2000 resident birth cohort was conducted by linking data from birth certificates, Child Protective Services, a statewide hospital-based trauma registry, hospital discharge data, and the Alaska Infant Mortality Review (including death certificates). The main outcome measures were the incidences of overall physical abuse and abuse resulting in hospitalization or death. A case of child abuse was defined as an instance of substantiated physical abuse to an infant identified in the Child Protective Services database or an infant death with homicide identified on the death certificate as the manner of death. RESULTS: During the 7-year study period, there were 70,842 births and 325 cases of physical abuse including 72 that led to hospitalization (n = 58), death (n = 4), or both (n = 10); respective incidences for all abuse and abuse leading to hospitalization or death were 4.6 and 1.0 per 1000 live births. Following multivariate analyses, the risk factors with the highest population attributable risks were maternal or paternal education < or = 12 years, unmarried mother, and maternal prenatal substance use. To determine if the study methodology was likely to have missed cases of severe abuse, we examined information for all 216 infants hospitalized for trauma during the study period who did not have identification of abuse in one of the study databases; of these, at least 39 had injuries inconsistent with the reported mechanism (a long bone or skull fracture that reportedly resulted from a fall of less than 3 feet or from a caretaker's arms or for which the caretaker denied a history of trauma). Conclusions: Alaska has one of the highest documented infant physical abuse incidences reported in the literature and abuse is associated with potentially modifiable-primarily social-risk factors. Despite this high incidence, substantial under-reporting of hospitalized cases likely occurs.     

Students' evaluation of teaching in a Saudi Arabian university

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness by different sources is a well established practice. It is generally carried out in the form of student evaluation using rating scales. This article describes one such system designed for the College of Engineering at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It describes the operation of the system in detail, including a rating scale questionnaire about both teacher and course. The author proposes a method of analysing the responses so as to make them effective for feedback. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of this proposed method of analysis, he presents a sample analysis of a two-semester period involving eight teachers, six courses (multi-section), and 16 responses. The results show that:
1 The average response for the same teacher from different courses was fairly consistent.
2 A norm can be developed to compare the average responses for different teachers.
3 There was a good correlation between the average rating of a teacher and the percentage of students wanting to take another course with him.
4 The students' responses about the content of a multi-section course were fairly consistent from different sections of that course.
5 The overall ratings of different courses were compared with each other, and showed good consistency with the nature of the courses.
Since the results were based on a two-semester period, a semester-to-semester comparison of either the teacher ratings or course ratings could not be made, but as more data is gathered this may become possible in future.