About this session

Thursday, 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Prevalence, Pathways, and Practical Applications

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are commonly defined as the experience of abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction before age 18. Since the seminal study by Felitti et al. in 1998, research on ACEs has grown rapidly and produced heterogeneous findings on their prevalence and impacts. Despite this expanding literature, questions remain about how ACEs manifest across different populations, how they are transmitted across generations, and how ACEs-related knowledge can inform policy and clinical practice.

In the current symposium, we use unique yet complementary meta-analytic methodologies to provide a comprehensive examination of ACEs. The first paper presents a multicategory prevalence meta-analysis to estimate the prevalence of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4+ ACEs in various child population samples (N = 490,423; 18 countries), with moderator analyses compare prevalence rates across differing demographic and geographic populations. The second paper offers a meta-analysis of the intergenerational transmission of ACEs, examining associations between caregiver and child ACEs score (N = 4,872 caregiver-child dyads), with additional moderator analyses. The third paper applies a novel meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) framework to investigate how intimate partner violence mediates the association between ACEs and internalizing psychopathology in women (N = 30,497). Finally, the fourth paper describes a systematic approach to creating and implementing an online platform designed to synthesize and disseminate available evidence on ACEs for the benefit of public policy and clinical practice.

This symposium provides a comprehensive examination of ACEs research using novel meta-analytic approaches, integrates findings on prevalence, intergenerational transmission, and the development of evidence-based solutions.

Paper #1
Title	Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Meta-Analysis of Prevalence in Child Population Samples
Presenting author	Raela Thiemann, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Canada

Paper #2
Title	The Legacy of Adversity: A Meta-Analysis of Caregiver and Child Adverse Childhood Experiences
Presenting author	Jenney Zhu, University of Calgary, Canada

Paper #3
Title	The role of IPV in the association between ACEs and internalizing psychopathology: A mediation meta-analysis
Presenting author	Mrs. Julia Martini, University of Toronto, Canada

Paper #4
Title	Developing a Knowledge Hub for Synthesis and Dissemination of Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Presenting author	Carole A. Lunney, University of Calgary, Canada

View all paper details

Session chairs
Dr. Sheri Madigan, Ph.D., University of Calgary, Canada; Pasco Fearon, Ph.D., , United Kingdom

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