On the issue of Developing a Methodology for Assessing the Prevalence of Violence against Children

The article covers the main methodological challenges of studying child abuse scale, connected to principal definitions, data collection obstacles, research procedure and interpreting the results. In order to get a valid estimation of child abuse scale, it is needed to have a complex of official statistics on children’s situation in Russia, public and professional surveys, and psychological research of children with their social environment. All studies must follow ethical norms, keep participation voluntary, and prevent secondary traumatization. Organizing and fulfilling the research require special training of both researchers and data collectors.