Understanding Racial/Ethnic Differences In Expanded Adverse Childhood Experiences: Evidence from Network Analysis and Measurement Invariance

Background and Purpose: Despite nearly three decades of research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), knowledge continues to be hindered by lack of methodological innovation and sophistication. For instance, scholars default to the 10-item measure that emerged from the original ACE Study while ignoring other adversities in the home and community that disproportionately affect disadvantaged and marginalized populations. As a result, prevalence estimates are skewed, and little is known about how ACEs cluster in different subgroups. Moreover, although disparities in prevalence have been documented, it is unclear whether they reflect differences in experience or reporting. To address these gaps, we analyze networks of co-occurrence in an expanded set of ACEs and explore whether these patterns vary across racial/ethnic groups. We also perform tests of measurement non-invariance to assess the extent to which group differences may reflect response biases.

Methods: Data were drawn from the Families and Children Thriving Study, a panel study of low-income households that received home visiting services. The current analysis focuses on 1,319 non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, or Hispanic women who completed the Childhood Experiences Survey, a validated measure that assesses 10 conventional ACEs along with seven novel ACEs: family financial problems, food insecurity, homelessness, parental absence, parent/sibling death, bullying, and violent crime victimization.

Network analyses were conducted in R with an Ising model to map pairwise, binary interactions between nodes, thereby estimating the connectivity of ACEs for each racial/ethnic group. Centrality indices (e.g., strength, closeness, betweenness) indicate the most influential nodes and network structures for each group. Finally, measurement invariance across racial/ethnic groups was assessed in Mplus via multi-group confirmatory factor analysis with an alignment optimization procedure.

Results: The most central ACEs and overall network strength did not differ by race/ethnicity. For non-Hispanic White and Hispanic participants, the most influential ACE was emotional abuse (strength = 5.11 and 5.86, respectively), while emotional neglect was the most central adversity for non-Hispanic Black participants (strength = 5.89). Financial difficulty emerged as the second-most influential adversity across racial/ethnic groups (strength = 4.38–5.21). Invariance tests revealed no differences in the network structures for non-Hispanic White and Black participants (M = 0.19, p = 0.43). However, the network structures differed significantly between Hispanic participants and both non-Hispanic White (M = 0.27, p = 0.002) and Black participants (M = 0.35, p = 0.03).

Factor loadings for the full measure were invariant across groups. At the item level, several ACEs showed threshold-level non-invariance, including homelessness, bullying, physical abuse, household mental illness, parental absence, and parent/sibling death. Despite these signs of concern, the total percentage of non-invariant parameters was 20.6%, which is below the benchmark signifying a measurement alignment concern (> 25%).

Conclusion: Emotional neglect and abuse and household financial difficulties were consistently influential items within ACE networks across racial/ethnic groups. Although the latent structure of ACEs was also consistent across groups, the probability of endorsing specific ACEs varied. Further research is needed to explore whether this variation reflects cultural differences in interpretation and reporting or true group differences in adverse childhood experiences.