Adverse Childhood Experience Scale Among Inuit Youth in Greenland

Abstract

The Adverse Childhood Experience Scale Among Inuit Youth in Greenland (ACEIG scale), developed by Ottendahl et al. (2024), addresses a critical gap in psychological measurement by providing a comprehensive scale to measure Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) specifically within this Arctic Indigenous population. The development utilized data derived from the ‘Wellbeing among Inuit youth in Greenland’ survey. Initially adapting an 11-item ACE-scale (BRFSS, 2016), the authors added four items—including bullying, parental death, gambling problems, and suicide in close relations—to enhance contextual relevance for the local cultural and social environment. Through rigorous psychometric refinement using Item Response Theory (IRT), the final instrument was successfully reduced to a robust 10-item scale, exhibiting strong internal consistency.

Keywords

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Greenland, Inuit Youth, Childhood Adversity, Trauma Measures, ACEIG scale, Adolescence

Authors

Charlotte Brandstrup Ottendahl, Ivalu Katajavaara Seidler, Astrid Beck, Peter Bjerregaard, Christina Viskum Lytken Larsen

Purpose

The primary purpose of the ACEIG scale is to systematically assess the prevalence and impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) among Arctic Indigenous youth residing in Greenland. This measure is crucial for informing public health initiatives and mental health interventions tailored to the specific challenges faced by this unique population group.

The scale was explicitly designed to overcome the limitations of standard ACE instruments, which often fail to capture culturally specific adversities relevant to the experience of Inuit youth, thereby ensuring greater ecological validity and precision in research and clinical settings.

Construct

The scale measures Adverse Childhood Experiences, which are potentially traumatic events that occur before the age of 18. These experiences include various forms of abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. The ACEIG scale operationalizes this construct by focusing on exposures identified as particularly salient in the context of Greenland, such as substance misuse within the family, violence victimization, and the impact of suicide among close relations.

While based on the foundational concepts of the original ACE study, the ACEIG is a refined revision that incorporates culturally relevant items to accurately reflect the domains of childhood adversity experienced by the target population.

Validity

Validity evidence for the ACEIG scale was primarily established through the application of Item Response Theory (IRT). This modern psychometric approach was utilized to evaluate the performance of individual items and ensure they accurately measure the latent trait (childhood adversity) across the continuum of severity.

During the development process, items demonstrating extreme difficulty indices—meaning they were either too easily or too rarely endorsed—were excluded to enhance the overall construct validity and measurement precision of the final instrument. The resulting 10-item scale represents a highly relevant and statistically sound measure of ACEs for Inuit youth.

Reliability

Internal consistency, a key measure of reliability, was assessed for the final 10-item ACEIG scale. The instrument demonstrated good reliability, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.70. This value indicates that the items within the scale are sufficiently correlated and measure the same underlying construct of Adverse Childhood Experiences reliably.

This level of internal consistency suggests that the scale is suitable for use in group research and population-level assessment among adolescents in Greenland.

Factor Analysis

A formal Factor Analysis, such as Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) or Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), was not reported as having been conducted during the development and validation process detailed by Ottendahl et al. (2024). The scale structure was refined primarily through the lens of Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis.

Instrument

Test Type: Revision

Format: Inventory/Questionnaire

Language Available: Likely Greenlandic, Danish, and/or English (inferred based on regional context)

Population Group: Human; Male; Female

Age Group: Adolescence (13–17 years)

Population Details: Inuit youth in Greenland

Test Methodology: Internal Consistency; Item Response Theory (IRT)

Keywords

Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACEIG scale, Childhood Adversity, Psychometrics, Cronbach’s alpha, Trauma Screening, Arctic Indigenous Populations

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier:

• Charlotte Brandstrup Ottendahl: 0000-0002-9285-3099
• Ivalu Katajavaara Seidler: 0000-0002-4956-6326
• Astrid Beck: 0000-0003-3366-9723
• Peter Bjerregaard: 0000-0001-7153-8447
• Christina Viskum Lytken Larsen: 0000-0002-6245-4222

Affiliation Email addresses: The primary correspondence email is [email protected].

Correspondence Address: Charlotte Brandstrup Ottendahl, University of Southern Denmark, National Institute of Public Health, Studiestraedet 6, Kobenhavn K, Denmark, 1455.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was developed and published in 2024. Information regarding specific permissions, licensing fees, or commercial use is not provided in the primary source material. No downloadable file of the instrument itself is currently available from the reference documentation.

Reference’s

Ottendahl, C. B., Seidler, I. K., Beck, A., Pedersen, C. P., Bjerregaard, P., & Larsen, C. V. L. (2024). Developing the ACEIG-scale: An adverse childhood experience scale for Inuit youth in Greenland. Child Abuse & Neglect, 148, 1–12. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106471

Items of the Adverse Childhood Experience Scale Among Inuit Youth in Greenland

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The final instrument, refined using Item Response Theory (IRT) and demonstrating strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.7), comprises 10 items assessing various domains of childhood adversity:

1. alcohol problems in close family
2. drug use in close family
3. witnessing domestic violence
4. physical violence victimization
5. psychological violence victimization
6. sexual abuse
7. sexual abuse (intercourse)
8. repeated sexual abuse
9. suicide in close relations
10. gambling problems in close family