Statistics in the News

  For this assignment I went to the Philadelphia Inquirer to find an article with statistics to analyze.  I found an article entitled "Child-welfare challenges for the next Pa. governor".  The whole first paragraph of this article is statistics concerning the welfare of children in Pennsylvania.  The statistics mentioned are: during the last year 120,000 Pa children received welfare services, more than 3,000 children were victims of child abuse, and over the past eight years more than 350 Pa children died as a result of child abuse.
  With regards to the first statistic that last year 120,000 children in Pa received welfare services, my first question would be who collected this data?  If the data was collected by the office that handles the distribution of child welfare services, I would deem it credible.  But what is the margin of error here?  Is it possible that there are some children receiving welfare not accounted for in this number?
  The second statisitc raises a few more questions for me.  Unlike the first statistic, I am not provided with the information to determine when 3,000 children were victims of child abuse.  Again, I do not know who collected the data to determine this number.  In the article it also states that "many more children experienced domestic or sexual violence that fell outside of the official definition of child abuse", so how do we account for those children?  What is the official definition of child abuse and what categories are not included within the definition? This would be critical information to know when assessing this statistic. I'm sure that in this case the margin of error is extremely high, considering that not all instances of child abuse are reported.
  Finally, addressing the statistic that over the last eight years over 350 children died from child abuse raises a few more questions for me.  I feel that this number should be more concrete considering we are analyzing death records and cause of death.  How was this data collected?  Did the author of this article research all the child death records for the past eight years in all of Pennsylvania?  What determines "death as a result of child abuse?"  I think that the margin or error in this case would be much higher because the number is not very concrete, and it seems to me that more research could have been done to provide the public with a more accurate statistic.