Improving the Assessment of Childhood Adversity: Factors Influencing Questionnaire and Interview Method Concordance

TL;DR

This study explores why caregivers give different answers when reporting childhood adversity via interviews versus questionnaires, focusing on factors like poverty and mental health.

Contribution

The study identifies poverty level as a novel factor influencing discrepancies in caregiver reports of childhood adversity across assessment formats.

Findings

Caregivers from lower federal poverty levels showed lower agreement between interview and questionnaire assessments.

Participants felt more empowered to exercise research rights during interviews than with questionnaires.

Mental health, race-congruence, and participation beliefs were not significantly linked to total agreement between formats.

Abstract

Although caregiver reports of adverse life events (ALEs) in young children yield notable discrepancies for face-to-face interview vs. paper-and-pencil questionnaire assessments, the factors contributing to these differences are not well understood. The present study addressed this knowledge gap by examining multiple factor domains for caregivers (e.g., caregivers’ assessment beliefs, mental health, demographics) that might play a role in these discrepancies. Participants were 57 caregivers (Mage = 33.72; 96.5% biological mothers; 61.4% Black/African American) of pre-school and school-age children who completed an interview and questionnaire ALE assessment, as well as measures of mental health challenges and research participation beliefs (e.g., positive experience, privacy, research rights). Concordance between formats at the participant level was mostly in the moderate range. Results suggested that participants were more likely to believe they could exercise their research rights (e.g., know they could terminate the assessment at any time) during the interview format relative to questionnaire format. Caregiver mental health, race-congruence with the interviewer, and participation beliefs were not significantly associated with total agreement. However, participants from lower federal poverty levels tended to demonstrate lower agreement between formats, compared to participants from higher federal poverty levels. Taken together, these findings highlight the need for dual approaches to assess ALEs in children when relying on caregiver report, as well as to ensure the aspects of the ALE administration procedure (including before and after the ALE assessment) are similar across assessment formats. This may be especially important when working with families from low-income backgrounds to improve detection of ALEs in young children.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-026-00817-2.