Relationships between childhood adversity and life functioning in US college students: Risk and resilience

Abstract

Objective: We examined the relationships between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and measures of mental health, academic achievement, and consequences of alcohol use, and moderators of these associations. We hypothesized that most students with high (3+) ACEs scores would be resilient on at least one measure but that few would be resilient on all measures. Additionally, we expected that greater social support and coping self-efficacy would buffer the association between ACEs and outcomes.Participants and methods: Secondary analysis of survey data from undergraduate students collected in 2015 (N = 8,997) and 2018 (N = 7,924).Results: The majority of students with high ACEs scores were resilient on each measure; 34% were resilient across all three. More students without ACEs were resilient on each measure and across all measures. Higher coping self-efficacy buffered the association between ACEs and poorer mental health.Conclusions: Research on ACEs in students should acknowledge resilience and risk.

Keywords:

• Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
• college students
• mental health
• resilience

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Minnesota.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.

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Notes

1 ^{We deviated from the pre-registration in the following ways. To test hypothesis 2, we included both moderators in the same analyses and ran three, rather than six, regressions in each sample to reduce the number of analyses, and used p values of .003 rather than .008. We conducted but did not report the Johnson-Neyman follow-up analyses for significant regressions because the transition points were outside the range of scores in our samples.}