Adolescent Maltreatment and Risk Behaviors: A Comparison of Child Protective Service Reports and Youth Self-reports

Adolescence is a critical period in the development of close peer-relationships and identity formation. The degree of harm experienced by the maltreatment can be amplified by the subjective meaning the adolescent victim ascribes. Assessing maltreatment experience on adolescent victims’ perspective is critical to understand their subsequent risk behaviors in addition to Child Protective Service (CPS) reports. The current study explores how youth risk behaviors are predicted by maltreatment experiences which occurred between the ages of 12 and 16 by two different maltreatment informants, adolescent self-report and CPS reports. The study included 694 adolescents who completed self-report of maltreatment questions and also had available CPS records from Longitudinal Study of Child Abuse and Neglect. The findings of the study suggest that there are significant differences in predicting youth risk behaviors between CPS reports and youth self-reports. Adolescents’ subjective appraisals of their maltreatment experiences independently contributed to the prediction of their risk behaviors. Addressing youth’s perception of maltreatment experiences through self-reports in addition to CPS reports has significant implication for understanding their risk behaviors and working with them in practice settings.