Some Thoughts on the Increasing Use of Administrative Data in Child Maltreatment Research

This commentary discusses three important articles in this issue that track recidivism among child maltreatment cases using administrative data. An attempt is made to place these articles within the larger picture of administrative child maltreatment research. In particular, this article discusses the strengths and weaknesses inherent in computerized administrative data, and suggests that the increased use of such data in child maltreatment research is both desirable and inevitable. This article concludes with a discussion of long-term benefits attendant to the growth of computerized administrative databases, including the development of historical archives that will allow future researchers unprecedented freedom in pursuing longitudinal designs. Perhaps more importantly, this article contends that a prime benefit of computerized administrative databases is their innate tendency to drive enhanced policy-practice-research synthesis.