Adolescents and Children Risk of Abuse and Maltreatment Community Scale (ACRAM-CS)

Abstract

The Adolescents and Children Risk of Abuse and Maltreatment Community Scale (ACRAM-CS) (Samper et al., 2023) was developed as an essential enhancement to the existing ACRAM instrument (Carbonell et al., 2023; Navarro-Pérez et al., 2023). Its primary function is to serve as a comprehensive tool for evaluating maltreatment risk in children and adolescents by integrating critical community and institutional variables that previous scales often overlooked.

This measure is structured as an actuarial risk assessment inventory, intended for completion by Spanish-speaking child welfare workers. Although initially consisting of 21 items, the final refined structure comprises 20 items designed to assess risk across six distinct community dimensions. Psychometric evaluation, including factor analysis, supported the robust six-dimensional structure and demonstrated strong reliability and validity properties for use in professional settings.

Keywords

Child Welfare Professionals, Healthcare Factors, Institutional Malpractice, Public Administration, School Setting, Socioeconomic Factors, Structural Validity, Technical-Political Intervention, Child Abuse, Factorial Validity, Professional Liability, Risk Factors, School Environment, Social Workers, Risk Assessment, Socioeconomic.

Authors

Paula Samper, Ángela Carbonell, José M. Tomás, Adrián García-Mollá.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the ACRAM-CS is twofold: first, to provide a standardized tool for risk assessment of child and adolescent maltreatment that extends beyond traditional familial factors to encompass critical environmental and institutional elements. The scale focuses on systemic risks that are often mediated by community structures.

Second, the instrument is specifically designed to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of interventions and practices implemented by institutional settings and public services. By assessing factors such as Institutional Malpractice and Public Administration efficiency, the ACRAM-CS allows child welfare workers to identify systemic vulnerabilities and inform policy adjustments and resource allocation to better address community-level maltreatment risk.

Construct

The ACRAM-CS measures community-level and institutional maltreatment risk factors impacting children and adolescents. It operationalizes risk not as an individual or family phenomenon, but as a result of failures and pressures within the broader social and institutional context. The scale is completed by professionals who observe these systemic conditions.

The construct is comprised of six distinct dimensions that represent environmental contexts and systemic failings that may increase the likelihood of abuse or neglect: Socioeconomic (SE) factors, risks within the School setting (SS), the quality of Technical-political intervention (TP), efficacy of Public administration (PA), availability and quality of Healthcare factors (HC), and instances of Institutional malpractice (IM).

Validity

The validity of the ACRAM-CS was robustly assessed through structural, nomological, and convergent methods.

Regarding Structural Validity, the results derived from the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) strongly supported the measure’s intended six-factor structure (or factorial validity), confirming that the items accurately group into the proposed community dimensions. The rigorous statistical testing provided evidence that the scale reliably measures the intended underlying latent constructs.

In terms of Nomological and Convergent Validity, the ACRAM-CS dimensions generally exhibited correlations in the expected theoretical direction when compared against established measures, including the CTQ-SF (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form) and C-CAPS (Community Childhood Abuse and Neglect Predictors Scale). Most ACRAM-CS dimensions demonstrated significant correlation coefficients with both external scales, particularly those related to emotional and physical neglect and emotional abuse in the CTQ-SF. However, a specific non-significant correlation was noted between Socioeconomic factors and the Healthcare and Institutional Malpractice factors. Furthermore, physical abuse (from the CTQ-SF) showed no significant association with the ACRAM-CS dimensions, while sexual abuse demonstrated only two significant, yet low, correlations.

Reliability

The reliability of the ACRAM-CS was evaluated through estimates of internal consistency for each factor, utilizing the Composite Reliability Index (CRI). The results indicate high to excellent reliability across all six dimensions, suggesting strong internal consistency within each subscale and confirming that the items within each factor measure the same construct effectively.

The estimates of internal consistency for the six factors were reported as follows:

• Socioeconomic (CRI = .78)
• School setting (CRI = .85)
• Technical-political intervention (CRI = .95)
• Public administration (CRI = .74)
• Healthcare factors (CRI = .91)
• Institutional malpractice (CRI = .88)

Factor Analysis

The development of the ACRAM-CS utilized Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to test the theoretically derived six-factor model. This approach aimed to verify that the relationships between the observed items and their hypothesized latent factors were consistent with the data collected from child welfare workers.

Prior to CFA, one item (Item 14) belonging to the Institutional Malpractice dimension was excluded, resulting in the final 20-item scale. The fit indices for the total sample demonstrated an adequate fit of the 6-factor model to the data: χ² = 286.78, df = 155, p < .001; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .96; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .04, 90% CI [.03, .04]. These strong fit statistics provide robust statistical evidence supporting the scale’s proposed structure and its utility for community-level risk measurement.

Instrument

Test Type: Original

Format: Responses are recorded on a 3-point scale, structured as an actuarial risk assessment tool. The scoring categories are: 0 (there is clear evidence it does not occur), 1 (there are signs it might occur, but it cannot be confirmed), and 2 (there is clear evidence it does occur).

Language Available: Spanish

Population Group: Human; Male; Female

Age Group: Adulthood (18 yrs & older). (The scale assesses risk in children/adolescents but is completed by adult professionals.)

Population Details: Location: Spain. Respondents: Child Welfare Workers. Gender-Identity Reported: Nonbinary.

Test Methodology: Test Validity, Convergent Validity, Nomological Validity, Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

Affiliation Email addresses:

• Paula Samper: No data is Available
• Ángela Carbonell: No data is Available
• José M. Tomás: No data is Available
• Adrián García-Mollá: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: García-Mollá, Adrián: University of Valencia, Department of Methodology for the Behavioral Sciences, Av. de Blasco Ibáñez 21, Valencia, Spain, 46010, [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Corresponding Author

Fee: No

Test Year: 2023

Reference’s

Samper, P., Carbonell, Á., Tomás, J. M., & García-Mollá, A. (2023). Development and psychometric properties of the Adolescents and Children Risk of Abuse and Maltreatment Community Scale (ACRAM-CS). TPM-Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 30(3), 287–301.

Bernstein, D. P., Stein, J. A., Newcomb, M. D., Walker, E., Pogge, D., Ahluvalia, T., Stokes, J., & Handelsman, L. (2003). Development and psychometric properties of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF). Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(12), 1367–1377.

Ezzo, C., & Young, D. (2012). C-CAPS: Community Childhood Abuse and Neglect Predictors Scale.

Carbonell, Á., Navarro-Pérez, J. J., Samper, P., & Tomás, J. M. (2023). Validation of the ACRAM: Adolescents and Children Risk of Abuse and Maltreatment Scale in a Spanish sample. Child Abuse & Neglect, 137, 106037.

Items of the Adolescents and Children Risk of Abuse and Maltreatment Community Scale (ACRAM-CS)

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

This is a 20-item measure.

Factors and Subscales:

• Socioeconomic (SE)
• School setting (SS)
• Technical-political intervention (TP)
• Public administration (PA)
• Healthcare factors (HC)
• Institutional malpractice (IM)