Lest we forget: Comparing retrospective and prospective assessments of adverse childhood experiences in the prediction of adult health
By Aaron Reuben, Terrie E. Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, Daniel W Belsky, H. Harrington, Felix Schroeder, Sean Hogan, S. Ramrakha, Richie Poulton, A. Danese. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 2016
770 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; e.g., abuse, neglect, parental loss, etc.) have been associated with increased risk for later-life disease and dysfunction using adults’ retrospective self-reports of ACEs. Research should test whether associations between ACEs and health outcomes are the same for prospective and retrospective ACE measures. Methods We estimated agreement between ACEs prospectively-recorded throughout childhood (by Study staff at Study member ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15) and retrospectively-recalled in adulthood (by Study members when they reached age 38), in the population-representative Dunedin cohort (N=1,037). We related both retrospective and prospective ACE measures to physical, mental, cognitive, and social health at midlife measured through both objective (e.g., biomarkers and neuropsychological tests) and subjective (e.g., self-reported) means. Results Dunedin and CDC ACE distributions were similar. Retrospective and prospective measures of adversity showed moderate agreement (r=.47, p<.001; weighted Kappa = .31, 95% CI: .27–.35). Both associated with all midlife outcomes. As compared to prospective ACEs, retrospective ACEs showed stronger associations with life outcomes that were subjectively assessed, and weaker associations with life outcomes that were objectively assessed. Recalled ACEs and poor subjective outcomes were correlated regardless of whether prospectively-recorded ACEs were evident. Individuals who recalled more ACEs than had been prospectively recorded were more neurotic than average, and individuals who recalled fewer ACEs than recorded were more agreeable. Conclusions Prospective ACE records confirm associations between childhood adversity and negative life outcomes found previously using retrospective ACE reports. However, more agreeable and neurotic dispositions may respectively bias retrospective ACE measures toward underestimating the impact of adversity on objectively-measured life outcomes and overestimating the impact of adversity on self-reported outcomes. Associations between personality factors and the propensity to recall adversity were extremely modest and warrant further investigation. Risk predictions based on retrospective ACE reports should utilize objective outcome measures. Where objective outcome measurements are difficult to obtain, correction factors may be warranted.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Demography, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/751d0fc54f666bc94a5a4327752fa5222c05460f
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Citations in the corpus
- More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science (2018, neutral): “Studies directly comparing retrospective and prospective reports of adverse childhood experiences have found slight to fair agreement rates (reviewed in Newbury et al., 2018, Reuben et al., 2016).”
- Introduction to Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory (IPARTheory) and Evidence (2016, background): “An earlier longitudinal study followed participants for 35 years from age three through 38 (Reuben et al., 2016).”
- Long-term outcomes of childhood sexual abuse: an umbrella review (2019, neutral): “10,11 15 These reviews have been difficult to compare because their definitions of childhood sexual abuse have differed, they have included different types of study design, and the outcomes vary from diagnoses to self-report markers of morbidity.”