Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey Data for 2,030 U.S. Youth

A nationally representative survey of 2,030 U.S. youth aged 10 to 17 years tested an improved scale for adverse childhood experiences. The research, led by David Finkelhor, correlated adversities with mental health symptoms, improving the model's explanatory power from R²=0.21 to R²=0.34. Data includes adversities in domains like peer rejection, victimization, and community violence, alongside current distress symptoms.

Use Cases

• Predicting mental health symptoms based on reported lifetime adversities.
• Evaluating the relative impact of peer rejection and victimization versus traditional ACE items.
• Analyzing the correlation between socioeconomic status and childhood distress.
• Developing improved screening scales for harmful childhood experiences.

Strengths

• Data is from a nationally representative sample of 2,030 participants, enhancing generalizability.
• The study demonstrates a statistically significant improvement (R² increase from 0.21 to 0.34) in correlating adversities with symptoms.
• Expands beyond the original ACE scale to include peer, community, and socioeconomic factors.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the underlying dataset is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

David Finkelhor

Collection Method

Telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample.

Time Range

Lifetime adversities and current symptoms at time of survey.

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown.

Geography

United States (nationally representative sample).