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The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common in community samples and are associated with various dysfunctional physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. In this regard, criminal offenders are at specific risk, considering their elevated ACE rates compared with community samples and t...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10048956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36982104 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20065195 |
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author | Wente, Vera Maria Retz-Junginger, Petra Crombach, Anselm Retz, Wolfgang Barra, Steffen |
author_facet | Wente, Vera Maria Retz-Junginger, Petra Crombach, Anselm Retz, Wolfgang Barra, Steffen |
author_sort | Wente, Vera Maria |
collection | PubMed |
description | Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common in community samples and are associated with various dysfunctional physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. In this regard, criminal offenders are at specific risk, considering their elevated ACE rates compared with community samples and the associations of ACEs with criminal behaviors. However, assessing ACEs in offender samples by self-reports has been criticized with regard to their validity and reliability. We examined the suitability of ACE-self-reports using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) in a sample of 231 male offenders involved in the German criminal justice system by comparing self-reported to externally rated ACEs to externally rated ACEs based on the information from the offenders’ criminal and health-related files and on interviews conducted by forensically trained psychological/psychiatric experts. The accordance between self-ratings and expert ratings was examined considering mean differences, correlations, inter-rater agreement measures, and regression analyses. Offenders themselves reported a higher ACE burden than the one that was rated externally, but there was a strong relationship between CTQ self-assessments and external assessments. However, associations were stronger in offenders seen for risk assessment than in those evaluated for criminal responsibility. Overall, the CTQ seems suitable for use in forensic samples. However, reporting bias in self-reports of ACEs should be expected. Therefore, the combination of self-assessments and external assessments seems appropriate. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10048956 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100489562023-03-29 The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples Wente, Vera Maria Retz-Junginger, Petra Crombach, Anselm Retz, Wolfgang Barra, Steffen Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common in community samples and are associated with various dysfunctional physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. In this regard, criminal offenders are at specific risk, considering their elevated ACE rates compared with community samples and the associations of ACEs with criminal behaviors. However, assessing ACEs in offender samples by self-reports has been criticized with regard to their validity and reliability. We examined the suitability of ACE-self-reports using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) in a sample of 231 male offenders involved in the German criminal justice system by comparing self-reported to externally rated ACEs to externally rated ACEs based on the information from the offenders’ criminal and health-related files and on interviews conducted by forensically trained psychological/psychiatric experts. The accordance between self-ratings and expert ratings was examined considering mean differences, correlations, inter-rater agreement measures, and regression analyses. Offenders themselves reported a higher ACE burden than the one that was rated externally, but there was a strong relationship between CTQ self-assessments and external assessments. However, associations were stronger in offenders seen for risk assessment than in those evaluated for criminal responsibility. Overall, the CTQ seems suitable for use in forensic samples. However, reporting bias in self-reports of ACEs should be expected. Therefore, the combination of self-assessments and external assessments seems appropriate. MDPI 2023-03-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10048956/ /pubmed/36982104 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20065195 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Wente, Vera Maria Retz-Junginger, Petra Crombach, Anselm Retz, Wolfgang Barra, Steffen The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title | The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title_full | The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title_fullStr | The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title_full_unstemmed | The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title_short | The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples |
title_sort | suitability of the childhood trauma questionnaire in criminal offender samples |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10048956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36982104 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20065195 |
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