Is Mandated Reporting Good Policy? It Depends Who You Ask
By Kathryn S. Krase, PhD JD MSW
A project of Krase Consulting
Part 2 in a series
Introduction to Our Research
Mandated reporters are people required to make reports to child protective services (CPS) in their given state. We read and hear a lot about what mandated reporters are supposed to do and when. What we read and hear about far less is what mandated reporters actually think about the policy of mandated reporting, the system that reports are made into, and how the role of mandated reporter actually impacts the reporter, personally and professionally.
Interest in learning more about the experiences of mandated reporters was the starting point for a study I conducted with three colleagues — Dr. Latoya Attis, Dr. Emily Murphy, and Michelle Desir, LCSW. We surveyed nearly 400 mandated reporters across the country: mental health professionals, medical providers, educators, social service workers, child welfare staff, and more. The findings related to the opinions of mandated reporters was the subject of our first research article currently under peer review with Children and Youth Services Review.
Is Mandated Reporting a Good Policy?
This current post, the second in a series (ADD LINK TO SERIES), breaks down mandated reporters’ opinions about whether mandated reporting is a “good policy”.
Of all the items we asked mandated reporters about, they agreed most that mandated reporting is a good policy. 65.3% of the 386 professionals we surveyed said mandated reporting is a good policy. Only 23.6% disagreed. On its face, that looks like a settled question. It isn't. Once you look at who agrees and why, the picture gets a lot more interesting — and it sets up a pattern that shows up again and again throughout this series.
Who's Less Convinced
Social service professionals were less likely than other mandated reporters to endorse mandated reporting as good policy — a modest but statistically significant gap. No other single professional group stood apart on this item the way social service providers did.
Reporting experience mattered too. Reporters who had made at least one CPS report were more supportive of the policy than those who never made a report, and the more reports someone had made over their career, the more supportive of the policy they tended to be. Familiarity with the process, in other words, tracked with more favorable views of it — at least on this item.
Why Someone Made a Report is Related to What They Believe About Reporting
This is where it gets genuinely interesting. Among survey participants who had made reports to CPS, we asked what motivated their decision to report — legal obligation, concern for the child, helping the family access resources, or a general desire to do good.
Individual motivations predicted a different attitude toward the policy itself:
Reporters motivated by concern for the child were considerably more supportive of mandated reporting as policy — one of the larger effects in the entire dataset.
Reporters motivated by a desire to help the family access resources were also more supportive.
Reporters who reported primarily out of legal obligation — fear of personal legal consequences for failing to report — were less supportive of the policy.
Read that last point again. The people reporting because the law requires it are, on average, the least convinced the law is a good idea. That's not a contradiction in the data — it's the finding.
Knowing More, Believing Less
We also asked three true/false questions to gauge how well reporters actually understood the CPS system: whether Black children are reported at disproportionately high rates (true), whether most CPS reports are ultimately substantiated (false — the vast majority aren't), and whether neglect is the most common type of report (true, and often assumed otherwise).
Reporters who answered these correctly — who had a more accurate picture of how the system actually functions — were consistently less supportive of mandated reporting as policy than reporters who got these questions wrong.
This wasn't a fluke of one question. It held across all three knowledge items, and it's a pattern we'll come back to in depth in later posts, because it doesn't just show up here — it shows up almost everywhere in this study.
What Holds Up Once Everything Else is Accounted For?
When we combined all of these factors into multivariate statistical models — controlling for demographics, professional role, system knowledge, and reporting history simultaneously — one variable stood out above the rest: satisfaction with mandated reporter training. Reporters who felt good about the training they'd received were significantly more likely to view mandated reporting as sound policy, more so than any demographic factor, any professional role, or any single piece of system knowledge.
And the legal-obligation finding didn't just survive that fuller model — it sharpened. Even after accounting for training satisfaction, system knowledge, professional role, and every demographic in the model, reporters who framed their own reporting as a matter of legal duty remained significantly less likely to endorse mandated reporting as good policy. Meanwhile, reporters motivated by concern for the child or a genuine desire to do good remained significantly more supportive, even with everything else held constant.
We think of this as the legal-duty paradox: the exact motivation the system is built to rely on — "you have to report, or else" — is associated with the least conviction that the system built around that duty is actually a good one. People comply because they're afraid not to, not because they believe in what they're complying with.
Why This Matters
If you train mandated reporters, this is worth sitting with. A training model built primarily around legal threat — "here's what happens if you don't report" — may produce compliance without producing belief. And as we'll see throughout this series, belief in the system turns out to matter for a lot more than just whether someone reports. It shapes how burdened they feel by the role, how much they worry about the fallout, and ultimately, how sustainable this work feels to the people doing it.
Believing the policy is sound is one question. Believing the system that policy feeds into actually protects children and helps families is a related but separate question — and it's the one with the least agreement of all six we measured. That's where we go next.
This research is co-authored with Dr. Latoya Attis (Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University), Dr. Emily Murphy (School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Mercy University), and Michelle Desir, LCSW (Silbermann School of Social Work, Hunter College). A preprint of our research study is available on SSRN; the paper is currently under peer review at Children and Youth Services Review, and findings discussed in this series should be considered preliminary until publication. This research was supported by Children's Rights, Inc.
If this research resonates with you, consider learning more about the New York Mandated Reporting Working Group — a coalition of advocates, professionals, and impacted individuals — working towards a trust-based approach to service to children and families that better supports families and strengthens their stability and well-being. Learn more at https://www.nymrwg.org/
Cite this blog:
Krase, K. (2026, October 21). Is mandated reporting good policy? It depends who you ask. Krase Consulting Blog. www.kathrynkrase.com/post/is-mandated-reporting-good-policy-it-depends-who-you-ask
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