An attitude change campaign using an interpersonal and mass media strategy for agenda-setting could be used to elicit community understanding of child-abusing parents from a therapeutic rather than a punitive perspective, thereby improving the handling of this social problem. An outline of such a campaign would include phases of surveying the problem, agenda setting, planning strategies for mass media and interpersonal campaigns, and the implementation of these strategies. In this way, the issue of reporting child abuse involves altering attitudes toward several objects: abusing parents, public reporting of a private event, legal ramifications, and the abused child. The major contribution of applying agenda setting theory to the problem of child abuse would be to provide suggestions for the methods and details that the media and community leaders would use in the campaign. (RL)