Here are some less important/certain factors that I think you could also take into account with your model:
This intervention can’t prevent first incidents, which might make it much less effective.
Intuitively, I agree the harm from the first incident is likely larger than subsequent incidents. At a complete guess, I’d say the first incident is maybe 20-25% of total harm.
This intervention by nature cannot prevent first incidents (reporting requires an incident to take place).
The linear model therefore (perhaps significantly) overestimates the benefits of this intervention.
The bar for ‘interacting with’ 30 children might be high.
A teacher sees a child regularly over a long period of time. They therefore build a rapport that could lead to disclosures.
Doctors or police (mostly) see children relatively few times over a short period. It seems less likely they would be disclosed to because of the weaker rapport.
However, this might be outweighed by these professions being more likely to discover CSA (eg. noticing signs of CSA during a medical checkup; investigating other crimes which correlate with CSA offences).
Not all disclosures result in stoppages (sadly).
More importantly, the important factor is not whether a disclosure causes a stoppage, but how much quicker a stoppage occurs after disclosure, compared to no disclosure.
Depending on the length and complexity of the investigative process, this might not prevent much harm (although I hope I’m wrong).
It might be better to say an average of 1.5 years extra without disclosure.
This is half the time of the average CSA ‘cycle’, and assumes that each disclosure happens at a ‘random’ point.
The 1 year is also sensible, because I assume the chance of disclosing is proportional to the length of abuse taking place.
However, maybe the opposite is true. After a few incidents disclosure is likely, but after several incidents it becomes ‘normalised’ in some way, and the chance of disclosing drops dramatically.
This could make the intervention more or less cost effective, depending on how disclosure rates correlate with length of CSA.
Here are some less important/certain factors that I think you could also take into account with your model:
This intervention can’t prevent first incidents, which might make it much less effective.
Intuitively, I agree the harm from the first incident is likely larger than subsequent incidents. At a complete guess, I’d say the first incident is maybe 20-25% of total harm.
This intervention by nature cannot prevent first incidents (reporting requires an incident to take place).
The linear model therefore (perhaps significantly) overestimates the benefits of this intervention.
The bar for ‘interacting with’ 30 children might be high.
A teacher sees a child regularly over a long period of time. They therefore build a rapport that could lead to disclosures.
Doctors or police (mostly) see children relatively few times over a short period. It seems less likely they would be disclosed to because of the weaker rapport.
However, this might be outweighed by these professions being more likely to discover CSA (eg. noticing signs of CSA during a medical checkup; investigating other crimes which correlate with CSA offences).
Not all disclosures result in stoppages (sadly).
More importantly, the important factor is not whether a disclosure causes a stoppage, but how much quicker a stoppage occurs after disclosure, compared to no disclosure.
Depending on the length and complexity of the investigative process, this might not prevent much harm (although I hope I’m wrong).
It might be better to say an average of 1.5 years extra without disclosure.
This is half the time of the average CSA ‘cycle’, and assumes that each disclosure happens at a ‘random’ point.
The 1 year is also sensible, because I assume the chance of disclosing is proportional to the length of abuse taking place.
However, maybe the opposite is true. After a few incidents disclosure is likely, but after several incidents it becomes ‘normalised’ in some way, and the chance of disclosing drops dramatically.
This could make the intervention more or less cost effective, depending on how disclosure rates correlate with length of CSA.
Much for me to reflect on there. Thanks again!