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Updated: Mar 28, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Adverse childhood experiences, family functioning and adolescent health and emotional well-being
K S Balistreri1, M Alvira-Hammond1
1Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, USA.
Objectives:
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been consistently linked in a strong and graded fashion to a host of health problems in later adulthood but few studies have examined the more proximate effect of ACEs on health and emotional well-being in adolescence.
Study Design:
Nationally representative cross-sectional study.
Methods:
Using logistic regression on the 2011/12 National Survey of Children's Health, we examined the cumulative effect of total ACE score on the health and emotional well-being of US adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. We investigated the moderating effect of family functioning on the impact of ACE on adolescent health and emotional well-being.
Results:
Adolescents with higher ACE scores had worse reported physical and emotional well-being than adolescents with fewer ACEs net of key demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Family functioning moderated the negative impact of cumulative ACE on adolescent health and emotional well-being.
Conclusions:
Adolescent well-being has enduring consequences; identifying children with ACE exposure who also have lower-functioning family could also help identify those families at particular risk.
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