The CAP Inventory was designed primarily as a screening tool for the detection of physical child abuse by protective services workers in their investigations of reported child abuse cases. It is a 160-item, reliable and valid objective self-report screening instrument that can assist protective services workers in making case decisions. The CAP Inventory contains a total of 10 scales. The primary clinical scale (Abuse) can be divided into six factor scales: Distress, Rigidity, Unhappiness, Problems With Child and Self, Problems With Family, and Problems With Others. In addition, the CAP Inventory contains three validity scales: Lie, Random Response, and Inconsistency.

The CAP Inventory is appropriate for use as a preliminary screening tool when you wish to quickly screen a group of high-rish patients for a subgroup of individuals who are most likely to be at risk for physical child abuse. Intervention/treatment programs have successfully used the CAP Inventory at pre- and posttreatment and on a follow-up basis to assist in program evaluation.

• Overall, the 77-item CAP Abuse scale has high internal consistency reliabilities (i.e., .92-.96 for controls and .95-.98 for abusers); temporal stability estimates for the abuse scale also are adequate (i.e., .91 and .75 for one-day and three-month intervals, respectively).
  
• The Child Abuse Potential Inventory Manual, 2nd Ed. includes information about administration, scoring, and interpretation procedures.
  
• An Interpretive Manual for the Child Abuse Potential Inventory provides additional information for interpretation of the CAP Inventory, including applications, limitations and related issues, scale descriptions, and references.
  
• The CAP Inventory Form VI is a four-page test booklet with test items printed in large type for easy reading. Raw Score Summary Sheets provide a form for recording all the raw data generated from a client's CAP Inventory; Inconsistency Scale Scoring Sheets are used with the Inconsistency Scale Transparent Scoring Template to obtain an Inconsistency Scale Score.