Physical abuse, neglect, psychological abuse, human trafficking, and sexual abuse are among some of the areas of maltreatment that are present across the United States. Althought professional boards require maltreatment to be appropriately reported, laws governing reporting requirements vary by State. This variation across the country creates a gap in how data about maltreatment is reported leading to deficiencies in how maltreatment is addressed. This is most important for vulnerable populations.
Medical Neglect
The data selected for this project is based on types of maltreatment reported by State. I am interested in medical neglect as this is an under researched area. Based on the data, only 36 States reported Medical Neglect data. Nationally, there were 5614 cases of Medical Neglect Only reported. Of the 5614, Arkansas accounted for 1279 (22%) of those reported. Examining the variation in the reported data across the country leads one concerns in what this data may represent and if this data is reliable.
library(tidyverse)
── Attaching core tidyverse packages ──────────────────────── tidyverse 2.0.0 ──
✔ dplyr 1.2.1 ✔ readr 2.2.0
✔ forcats 1.0.1 ✔ stringr 1.6.0
✔ ggplot2 4.0.3 ✔ tibble 3.3.1
✔ lubridate 1.9.5 ✔ tidyr 1.3.2
✔ purrr 1.2.2
── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
✖ dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
✖ dplyr::lag() masks stats::lag()
ℹ Use the conflicted package (<http://conflicted.r-lib.org/>) to force all conflicts to become errors
Rows: 54 Columns: 21
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (1): State
dbl (12): Sex Trafficking Only, Unknown Only, Medical Neglect Only Percent, ...
num (8): Medical Neglect Only, Neglect Only, Other Only, Physical Abuse Onl...
ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.
head(maltreatment)
# A tibble: 6 × 21
State `Medical Neglect Only` `Neglect Only` `Other Only` `Physical Abuse Only`
<chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 Alab… 49 3380 NA 5114
2 Alas… 37 1445 NA 111
3 Ariz… NA 11332 NA 682
4 Arka… 1279 3421 1 1286
5 Cali… NA 50799 117 2161
6 Colo… 80 9517 NA 854
# ℹ 16 more variables: `Psychological Maltreatment Only` <dbl>,
# `Sexual Abuse Only` <dbl>, `Sex Trafficking Only` <dbl>,
# `Unknown Only` <dbl>, `Multiple Maltreatment Types` <dbl>,
# `Total Victims` <dbl>, `Medical Neglect Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Neglect Only Percent` <dbl>, `Other Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Physical Abuse Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Psychological Maltreatment Only Percent` <dbl>, …
tail(maltreatment)
# A tibble: 6 × 21
State `Medical Neglect Only` `Neglect Only` `Other Only` `Physical Abuse Only`
<chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 Wash… NA 2831 NA 569
2 West… NA 1173 NA 902
3 Wisc… NA 2802 NA 546
4 Wyom… 2 655 NA 13
5 Nati… 5614 399992 17614 67678
6 Repo… 36 52 21 52
# ℹ 16 more variables: `Psychological Maltreatment Only` <dbl>,
# `Sexual Abuse Only` <dbl>, `Sex Trafficking Only` <dbl>,
# `Unknown Only` <dbl>, `Multiple Maltreatment Types` <dbl>,
# `Total Victims` <dbl>, `Medical Neglect Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Neglect Only Percent` <dbl>, `Other Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Physical Abuse Only Percent` <dbl>,
# `Psychological Maltreatment Only Percent` <dbl>, …
str(maltreatment)
spc_tbl_ [54 × 21] (S3: spec_tbl_df/tbl_df/tbl/data.frame)
$ State : chr [1:54] "Alabama" "Alaska" "Arizona" "Arkansas" ...
$ Medical Neglect Only : num [1:54] 49 37 NA 1279 NA ...
$ Neglect Only : num [1:54] 3380 1445 11332 3421 50799 ...
$ Other Only : num [1:54] NA NA NA 1 117 ...
$ Physical Abuse Only : num [1:54] 5114 111 682 1286 2161 ...
$ Psychological Maltreatment Only : num [1:54] 16 327 1 25 2115 ...
$ Sexual Abuse Only : num [1:54] 1828 183 389 1415 2264 ...
$ Sex Trafficking Only : num [1:54] 3 1 NA NA NA NA NA NA 14 NA ...
$ Unknown Only : num [1:54] NA NA NA NA NA 9 NA NA NA NA ...
$ Multiple Maltreatment Types : num [1:54] 1287 955 443 995 6659 ...
$ Total Victims : num [1:54] 11677 3059 12847 8422 64115 ...
$ Medical Neglect Only Percent : num [1:54] 0.4 1.2 NA 15.2 NA 0.7 1.1 NA NA 1.9 ...
$ Neglect Only Percent : num [1:54] 28.9 47.2 88.2 40.6 79.2 77.7 58.6 25.1 80.3 39.2 ...
$ Other Only Percent : num [1:54] NA NA NA 0 0.2 NA NA 9.6 NA 24.9 ...
$ Physical Abuse Only Percent : num [1:54] 43.8 3.6 5.3 15.3 3.4 7 2.1 12.9 9.4 5.3 ...
$ Psychological Maltreatment Only Percent: num [1:54] 0.1 10.7 0 0.3 3.3 1 7.4 32.4 NA 0.5 ...
$ Sexual Abuse Only Percent : num [1:54] 15.7 6 3 16.8 3.5 8.1 2.3 9.7 2.4 7.2 ...
$ Sex Trafficking Only Percent : num [1:54] 0 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA 0.8 NA ...
$ Unknown Only Percent : num [1:54] NA NA NA NA NA 0.1 NA NA NA NA ...
$ Multiple Maltreatment Types Percent : num [1:54] 11 31.2 3.4 11.8 10.4 5.5 28.5 10.3 7.1 21.1 ...
$ Total Victims Percent : num [1:54] 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 ...
- attr(*, "spec")=
.. cols(
.. State = col_character(),
.. `Medical Neglect Only` = col_number(),
.. `Neglect Only` = col_number(),
.. `Other Only` = col_number(),
.. `Physical Abuse Only` = col_number(),
.. `Psychological Maltreatment Only` = col_number(),
.. `Sexual Abuse Only` = col_number(),
.. `Sex Trafficking Only` = col_double(),
.. `Unknown Only` = col_double(),
.. `Multiple Maltreatment Types` = col_number(),
.. `Total Victims` = col_number(),
.. `Medical Neglect Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Neglect Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Other Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Physical Abuse Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Psychological Maltreatment Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Sexual Abuse Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Sex Trafficking Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Unknown Only Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Multiple Maltreatment Types Percent` = col_double(),
.. `Total Victims Percent` = col_double()
.. )
- attr(*, "problems")=<pointer: 0x7faa957532a0>
