Children's witnessing of adult domestic violence

Social service professionals are more frequently identifying children who w itness adult domestic violence as victims of that abuse. This article expan ds common definitions of how children witness adult domestic violence. A to tal of 31 research articles that met established quality criteria were incl uded in this review. A variety of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive-func tioning problems among children were found to be associated with exposure t o domestic violence. Factors that appear to moderate the impact of witnessi ng violence-such as whether the child was also abused, child gender and age , and the time since last exposure to violence-were identified. Concerns ab out research methodology used in this area of research and the application of this knowledge also are raised.