A Latent Class Analysis of Childhood Maltreatment: Identifying Abuse Typologies

The relationship between child maltreatment and exposure to traumatic events during later adolescence and young adulthood

“…An important finding from this study was the emergence of a multiple abuse group (consisting of 2% of the sample), which is often unaccounted for in child maltreatment studies. This group also had the highest probabilities of endorsing all physical abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect items and the second highest probabilities of endorsing the sexual abuse items (17). This is in line with other research that has demonstrated that re-victimization and exposure to other types of maltreatment is more likely among children who have been maltreated previously (18,19).…”

“…The types of maltreatment categories used in this study were sexual abuse, emotional abuse, multiple abuse types (including physical and emotional abuse and neglect), and no abuse, as identified by Armour and colleagues (17). It was expected that those who had experienced some type of maltreatment during childhood would present with more traumatic events during adolescence (>13 years old) and young adulthood (<24 years old).…”

“…The latent class analysis revealed a four-class model: a non-abused group, an emotionally abused group, a sexually abused group, and a multiple abuse types group, which included physical and emotional abuse and neglect. A particular strength of the study was that it included a representative sample of the full adolescent population of Denmark, and thus it was the first study to investigate and uncover abuse typologies at a population level (17). An important finding from this study was the emergence of a multiple abuse group (consisting of 2% of the sample), which is often unaccounted for in child maltreatment studies.…”

“…It was expected that those who had experienced some type of maltreatment during childhood would present with more traumatic events during adolescence (>13 years old) and young adulthood (<24 years old). To date, there is no research comparing the outcomes of the different maltreatment groups identified by Armour and colleagues (17) or any evidence of indirect exposure to trauma in adolescents or young adults. In this study, indirect exposure to trauma is defined as witnessing or hearing about an event that affected an immediate family member.…”

Severity of maltreatment and personality pathology in adolescents of Jammu, India: A latent class approach

“…In addition, assessing for the interaction terms between types of abuse and neglect may prove tedious and difficult to interpret. For these reasons, the use of a person-based approach, such as latent class analysis (LCA) is preferred over variable-centered models (Roesch, Villodas, & Villodas, 2010) for the assessment of the impact of multiple types of or co-occurrence between different types of abuse and neglect (Armour, Elklit, & Christoffersen, 2014;Berzenski & Yates, 2011;Nooner et al, 2010). Latent class analysis classifies individuals into classes or groups based on similar responses to categorical observed variables.…”