Citation

Findley KA. Child Abuse Negl. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105577

PMID

35221136

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are the focus of much research. Consistently ACEs have been found to impact childhood development and psychosocial functioning. Efforts to understand this relationship are marred by methodological difficulties and inadequacies such as an overreliance on officially documented cases of abuse and cross-sectional study design. Officially documented cases of abuse only scratch the surface of the true prevalence of abuse and might be prone to biases. Cross-sectional study design is a sub-optimal methodology when used to investigate underlying mechanisms in a longitudinal relationship. To better understand what drives the purported relationship between ACEs and psychosocial functioning, this review will focus on studies that utilise prospective self-report designs to explore mediating and moderating variables.

ACEs involve a wide range of inter-correlated factors including child maltreatment (e.g. physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect) and household dysfunction (e.g. parent divorce, parental mental illness and parental substance abuse) (Felitti et al., 1998). Some studies have used factor analysis to formally examine the underlying structure. While ACEs broadly lead to similar outcomes, there are a number of different ways ACEs can be conceptualised. There is some empirical evidence that child maltreatment and household dysfunction variables can be separated although findings are mixed...

Language: en