Assessing the Nature of the Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Maladaptive Outcomes Across the Life Span

• In Event: Revisiting the Critical Role of Childhood Factors in Predicting Later Life Outcomes II

Abstract

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are an amalgam of many risk factors that are widely recognized across multiple disciplines as significant predictors of a variety of maladaptive outcomes across the life span. The majority of studies created a composite ACEs scale by adding the number of risk factors to measure accumulation of risk in multiple domains of functioning. When these studies assess how the exposure to a greater number of these risk factors is related to the variation in the outcome, they assume some functional forms of relationship (e.g., linear, quadratic with an accelerating or saturation effect, non-linear with threshold). Drawing on the longitudinal panel data obtained from a long-running prospective cohorts design, the current study attempts to explore the nature of relationship between exposure to cumulative risk in childhood and physical, mental, and behavioral outcomes in adulthood using both (1) conventional parametric approaches and (2) nonparametric approaches which require less assumptions regarding their true relationship in the population.

Author

• Chongmin Na, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY