Adolescent and caregiver reports of traumatic events experienced by adolescents who have been sexually abused: Relations with adolescent mental health.

OBJECTIVE

Screening for adolescent exposure to traumatic events (TEs) often involves asking adolescents to provide information on their exposure. The present study examined the association between adolescent and caregiver reports of adolescent exposure to TEs and the extent to which each informant's report of adolescent exposure to TEs adds substantively meaningful information to our understanding of adolescent mental health symptoms, over and above the other informant's reports.

METHOD: Participants were 508 adolescents (age: M = 13.81, SD = 1.79) who had disclosed sexual abuse and their nonoffending caregiver. Of the adolescents, 93.1% were female (59.3% were Hispanic/Latino/a). Adolescents and their nonoffending caregiver each provided information on adolescent exposure to TEs and adolescent mental health symptoms during an intake assessment at a children's advocacy center.

RESULTS

Adolescent and caregiver reports of adolescent exposure to TEs were correlated (r = .35, p < .001). Multivariate multilevel modeling analyses, simultaneously examining adolescent and caregiver reports of adolescent mental health symptoms as the multivariate outcome, indicated that each informant's report of TEs was uniquely associated with adolescent mental health symptoms (adolescent B = 0.23, p < .001; caregiver B = 0.11, p < .001). In exploratory analyses, the model that included an aggregate of both informants' reports of adolescent exposure to TEs was superior in predicting adolescent mental health than were the models with a single informant's reports (lower Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion fit indices).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the potential value of obtaining both adolescent and caregiver reports of an adolescent's exposure to TEs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).