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Cited by 421Child Abuse and TraumaChild Welfare and AdoptionChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

The ‘Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure’ (MACE) Scale for the Retrospective Assessment of Abuse and Neglect During Development

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Teicher, Martin H., Parigger, Angelika·2015·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0117423PMC PMC4340880
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Abstract

There is increasing interest in childhood maltreatment as a potent stimulus that may alter trajectories of brain development, induce epigenetic modifications and enhance risk for medical and psychiatric disorders. Although a number of useful scales exist for retrospective assessment of abuse and neglect they have significant limitations. Moreover, they fail to provide detailed information on timing of exposure, which is critical for delineation of sensitive periods. The Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure (MACE) scale was developed in a sample of 1051 participants using item response theory to gauge severity of exposure to ten types of maltreatment (emotional neglect, non-verbal emotional abuse, parental physical maltreatment, parental verbal abuse, peer emotional abuse, peer physical bullying, physical neglect, sexual abuse, witnessing interparental violence and witnessing violence to siblings) during each year of childhood. Items included in the subscales had acceptable psychometric properties based on infit and outfit mean square statistics, and each subscale passed Andersen's Likelihood ratio test. The MACE provides an overall severity score and multiplicity score (number of types of maltreatment experienced) with excellent test-retest reliability. Each type of maltreatment showed good reliability as did severity of exposure across each year of childhood. MACE Severity correlated 0.738 with Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) score and MACE Multiplicity correlated 0.698 with the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale (ACE). However, MACE accounted for 2.00- and 2.07-fold more of the variance, on average, in psychiatric symptom ratings than CTQ or ACE, respectively, based on variance decomposition. Different types of maltreatment had distinct and often unique developmental patterns. The 52-item MACE, a simpler Maltreatment Abuse and Exposure Scale (MAES) that only assesses overall exposure and the original test instrument (MACE-X) with several additional items plus spreadsheets and R code for scoring are provided to facilitate use and to spur further development.

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  • The Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure (MACE) is the first measure to directly assess timing of childhood maltreatment exposure within a developmental framework.

    “In fact, the Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure (MACE) (Teicher and Parigger, 2015) is the first measure to directly assess timing of childhood maltreatment exposure within a developmental framework.”

    From Developmental psychoneuroendocrine and psychoneuroimmune pathways from childhood adversity to disease (2017) · cites this paper as Teicher and Parigger, 2015

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  1. [51]Linacre JM, Wright BD (1994) Dichotomous Infit and Outfit Mean-Square Fit Statistics / Chi-Square Fit Statistics. Rasch Measurement Transactions 8: 350.
  2. [52]Wright BD, Stone MH (1979) Best Test Design. Chicago: Mesa Press.

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Authors
Teicher, M. H., & Parigger, A.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • University of Konstanz (DE)
Corresponding author
Teicher, Martin H.
ORCID
Teicher, Martin H.
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2015-02-25
Volume
10
Issue
2
Pages
e0117423
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0117423
PMC
PMC4340880
OpenAlex
W2103710345
Cited by
421
References
104
Citations by year
2026: 45 · 2025: 59 · 2024: 61 · 2023: 50 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 9
FWCI
29.80
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (1r01mh091391-01, 5r01da017846-14)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH-091391, MH091391, R01 MH-, DA-017846)
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA-017846, DA017846, MH-091391)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Child Welfare and Adoption
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
Keywords
child abuse, abuse and neglect, retrospective evaluation, exposure timing, sensitive period, emotional neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, witnessing violence, peer abuse, psychiatric symptoms, adverse childhood experiences, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, scale development, item response theory
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Child, Child Abuse, Child Development, Child, Preschool, Emotions, Female, Humans, Infant, Male, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Retrospective Studies, Risk Factors, Reproducibility of Results, Prevalence, Young Adult, Public Health Surveillance

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