Researching Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Youth Justice System: Reflections on Methodology From a Members of a Non-Indigenous Research Team

Abstract

Understanding the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has rapidly emerged as an important area of research that has implications for those who work in youth justice settings. This paper identifies a series of considerations facing those who work in jurisdictions where Indigenous or First Nations peoples have much higher levels of contact with both child protection and criminal justice systems than other population groups. It presents some reflections from members of a non-Indigenous research team about their efforts to engage with cultural perspectives on ACEs research in a way that facilitates further discussion within the research community about the methodological decisions that are made when investigating issues that are of importance to members of minority culture communities.

Keywords

Indigenous adverse childhood experiences methodology research Aboriginal quantitative

Recent years have seen growing interest—both internationally and across Australia—in understanding the ways in which negative childhood experiences are related to various health and social outcomes, including subsequent involvement with the youth justice system (e.g., Baidawi, 2020; Craig et al., 2017; Malvaso et al., 2017). An emerging focus of this work has been on the cumulative effects of what have been called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs; Felitti et al., 1998) on the risk of serious, violent, and chronic offending (e.g., Baglivio et al., 2016; DeLisi & Beauregard, 2018). According to Felitti and colleagues, ACEs are childhood experiences of both maltreatment (i.e., physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and physical and emotional neglect) and household dysfunction (i.e., parental separation, domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, and incarceration). It is now well-established that ACEs are commonplace, if not normal, for many of those who have contact with the criminal justice system. For example, a recent systematic review of international studies concluded that almost 90% of all justice-involved young people will have experienced at least one ACE (Malvaso et al., 2021). Moreover, this review reported that the odds of a young person in the juvenile justice system having experienced at least one ACE are over 12 times greater than for those of a young person who is not in the system. However, Malvaso and colleagues also noted that most of our knowledge in this area is derived from studies that lack the design features to determine the extent to which ACEs actually cause offending or whether they are simply correlates or coinciding vulnerabilities in high-risk populations. This distinction is, of course, critical to the development of evidence-based youth justice policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to present some observations and reflections, from the perspective of non-Indigenous researchers, about the methodological decisions that are made when gathering evidence about ACEs in youth justice populations. It is framed around a recent research project conducted in Australia (Malvaso et al., 2021) and how the findings of this project might best be used to inform the ongoing development of youth justice services in a jurisdiction in which young people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural backgrounds¹ are grossly over-represented across all levels of the system and where both the child protection and justice systems are seen by many as actively contributing to ongoing systemic disempowerment. This paper, in short, describes our efforts to follow the advice of Zyphur and Pierides (2017) that quantitative researchers should always start their work with a clear ethical purpose and aspire to maximize “relational validity”—the fit between research designs, analytical methods, and ethical outcomes. This requires, from the outset of the research, for researchers to think rather carefully about how we might answer questions such as: “Who is this research actually for?”; “What are we really trying to achieve?” and “How will our work improve services and outcomes for families and communities of young justice-involved people?”.

Even though our particular study was not specifically focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait populations (our primary question concerned how trauma mediates the association between ACEs and offending behavior in a youth justice population), we identified members of local Aboriginal communities as important stakeholders. Accordingly, in the very early stages of the project, we approached community representatives to discuss our aims, intentions, and how we viewed the potential contribution of the research. The study was also, of course, subject to ethical review and a reference group that included Indigenous representation was convened to provide oversight of the project. This served as one way to inform the community about our research and provided an opportunity for the team to receive feedback throughout the research. As the data collection and analysis process unfolded, however, we became increasingly aware of the different ways that this work might be received by members of community.

Indigenous Research Methodologies

A starting point for this discussion is to acknowledge that for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people research is intimately bound up with a political process of colonization, where quantitative data is often used to maintain the status quo or, at worst, to promote inequity (see Blagg, 2016; Humphrey, 2000). Concerns have also been expressed about a range of related problems including the appropriation of knowledge, the exploitative and disrespectful treatment of Indigenous research participants for the purpose of building academic reputations, the failure of researchers to deliver either short- or long-term benefits to Indigenous communities, and the misrepresentation of Indigenous cultures, practices, individuals and communities by non-Indigenous professionals. What is particularly noticeable in this regard is that most child protection and criminal justice statistics are derived from research practices that decontextualize data from the social and cultural context that they relate to—and this alone, it has been argued, can lead to analyses that either lack validity or are overly simplistic. For example, social statistics often reflect what Walter and Suina (2019) have referred to as “5D” data; they describe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander difference, disparity, disadvantage, dysfunction, and deprivation in ways that often serve to conceal the “full story” or “truth” that sits behind the numbers. And a consequence of this, it has been suggested, is that Indigeneity comes to be understood as a “cause” of social problems, rather than as an indication of systemic racism and inequity that distracts from understandings about the progress that services, communities, and individuals are making (Thurber et al., 2020). In fact, concerns such as these led Tuhawai Smith (1999) to famously describe research as one of the “dirtiest words in the Indigenous dictionary” and have prompted significant interest in what is often now referred to as a “decolonizing research” agenda (e.g., Marsh et al., 2015).

The term decolonization is used in the context of research to describe a process whereby Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can claim a space from which to develop a sense of “authentic humanity” through the adoption of ethically and culturally acceptable methodological approaches. This has been described in terms of embracing an understanding of the history of colonization (e.g., Hart, 2010) and involves researchers making an explicit commitment to Indigenous peoples and their right to self-determination (e.g., Wilson, 2008). In fact, a specific goal for many decolonizing researchers is to break free from a Western paradigm that focuses on the discovery and interpretation of “facts,” to work alongside Indigenous communities in ways that serve to strengthen them and/or promote capacity building (e.g., Heikkilä, 2016). The key qualities of the recommended approach are thus reflected in the use of terms such as “reflexive,” “relational,” “contextual,” “holistic,” “critical,” and “participatory” and share many of the characteristics of mainstream qualitative research methodologies (even though it is important to note that these have not generally been developed using Indigenous epistemologies; Kovach, 2009). In Australia this type of research has, to some extent at least, come to be endorsed in various guidelines (e.g., the CONSIDER statement; Huria et al., 2019) and it is now quite common for non-Indigenous researchers to utilize conversational and narrative methods considered better suited to Indigenous knowledge production (e.g., Butcher et al., 2020) rather than the quantitative or positivist approaches that are employed in most ACEs studies.

ACEs Research

So how might these discussions be relevant to any assessment of the quality and value of ACEs research? Our first observation relates to our growing awareness of the extent to which the choice of methodology, in an important sense, will determine which research questions can even be asked (see Zyphur & Pierides, 2017). In relation to this, it seems clear that the very way in which ACEs have been conceptualized (i.e., in terms of life events; Felitti et al., 1998, see Zarse et al., 2019) means that historical events—especially those that perpetuate disadvantage over time—are not readily identified as of direct relevance (see also Burnette & Figley, 2017).² For example, it might be argued that the assessment of childhood maltreatment and household dysfunction inevitably overlooks how adversity can be—and is—perpetuated over time. Some of these may be single, isolated events but others are harms that result from the continuous imposition of stigma, oppression, and/or systemic racism, or what has been referred to in the Indigenous-focused literature as “historical abuse” (e.g., Gone et al., 2019), or “inter-generational trauma” (e.g., Day et al., 2008). This resonates with the arguments of Whitbeck et al. (2004) who suggest that it is particularly important to document those historical losses and harms that are most salient for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people if we want to understand negative presentations in contemporary times. And yet, there seemed to be limited scope to do this in any study designed around the original ACEs construct.

A related set of considerations here arise in relation to how key constructs are measured, as well as how data should be analyzed. As noted above, the widely used ACEs scale (Felitti et al., 1998) is simply a checklist of life events that is endorsed by participants. There is no capacity to ask how different communities may have been affected by (and resisted) colonization and the tangible structural inequalities that continue as a result—in different time periods and under distinct conditions (see Brave Heart, 2003). Thus, by virtue of the measurement strategy that is employed, ACEs researchers may—albeit unintentionally—ignore the pervasive historical context that contributes to inequity; they may simply then conclude that the evidence for any connection is weak or decide that historical events have not left any substantive legacy. This is not a direct criticism of the work of Felitti and colleagues as the ACEs questionnaire was originally designed for a specific purpose; rather it refers to a concern that the tool has been misapplied by both practitioners and researchers (Anda et al., 2020) and that research in this area simply perpetuates the problem.

In addition, and as Walter and Suina (2019) have argued, while linking multiple data sets (e.g., child protection, justice system) will provide a “bigger ball” (p. 236) of data, this will not necessarily be a more informative one. If only deficit-related items are used, then the result will simply be to expand the number of analyses that have been conceived and executed from non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldviews. This suggests the need, without reifying the notion of “colonization”, to develop methods that ascertain and/or quantify the effects of intergenerational trauma, loss of country, and ongoing structural inequality. A further consideration here is the need to balance deficit-based approaches with those that aim to identify strengths and, in this regard, there have been some studies that have examined how positive childhood experiences (“counter-ACEs”) can lead to better health and wellbeing outcomes even in the presence of adversity (e.g., Crandall et al., 2019).

An even bigger concern potentially arises from the policy implications that might emerge from studies that show a strong association between ACEs and criminal behavior in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. A logical conclusion that might be drawn here is that the preferred response should be to invest further in secondary prevention strategies (i.e., interventions that aim to reduce the prevalence of ACEs in “at-risk” Aboriginal communities), whereas a consequence of this could be that the resulting “solutions” will only have iatrogenic effects. Rather than partnering with communities this may, for example, lead to further investment in child protection and policing services (e.g., monitoring families more closely, removing children at risk) that will only lead to more responsibility for the “problem” being placed on families and communities. This would only serve to deflect responsibility from those in the criminal justice system (e.g., the police, courts, and juvenile justice) and would probably sit uncomfortably with criminologists who are generally concerned with redressing inequality and addressing its underlying causes (e.g., McKinley et al., 2020).

ACEs researchers might argue, in response, that many of these arguments ignore a fundamental distinction between ethical outcomes and ethical processes. They could suggest, for example, that as a matter of principle, scientists should not choose their desired outcomes or contrive their research processes to achieve those outcomes. Nor should they even attempt to define what a “problem” is or decide which ideas get published (Powell, 2020). In this sense they might acknowledge that determining the nature and extent of Indigenous overrepresentation in the youth justice system is a quantitative research problem, but view eliminating over-representation as a human problem or a social problem (or even an economic problem) that should not concern them as scientists. For us, however, as non-Indigenous researchers, these arguments did not feel sufficiently persuasive. Put simply, we were interested—as social scientists—in how the political and cultural landscape in which criminal justice services are provided both constrains and/or enables potential solutions to contemporary social problems. And so, we chose to proceed with a government-funded project that aimed to better understand the pathways from ACEs to criminal justice system involvement, while acknowledging our responsibilities in framing how these problems are conceptualized. We describe how we proceeded in this particular study next.

Our Approach

We approached this research from the position that it is wrong to presume that all quantitative methodologies are culturally unsafe. We agreed with Walter and Suina’s (2019) argument that being “non-active in the quantitative research space equates to lived consequences for Indigenous peoples at the individual and collective level” (p. 234). Walter and Suina go on to argue that an avoidance of Indigenous quantitative analysis risks “an absence of Indigenous participation in the framing of the policy directions that flow from those data” (p. 234) with this resonating strongly with our previous experiences in criminological research; that it is quantitative research methods that produce the primary evidence base that policy makers value the most highly and rely on the most (e.g., Day, Francisco, & Jones, 2013). Thus, we decided not to conduct ethnographic or qualitative work (even though conceptual frameworks for this are available, e.g., Chamberlain et al., 2019), but to design a quantitative study to complement current understandings of the needs of young people in the criminal justice system and their families and communities. At the same time, we wanted to think about the potential relevance of our work to addressing broader issues of over-representation, conscious that simply illustrating levels of inequity does not always galvanize action (Whop, 2019). A particular consideration was our awareness of the need to exercise caution before making direct cultural comparisons (e.g., “Aboriginal vs. non-Aboriginal” ACEs) in case these could be misinterpreted and/or used—even unintentionally—to promote or entrench inequality. Finally, we wanted to be more accountable to the range of different groups that we considered to be stakeholders in the youth justice sector. This led us to ask ourselves two key questions that relate not only to our particular study but also (potentially) to other quantitative ACEs research studies.

How Valid Are the Data?

While it is well-established that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are over-represented across both child protection and youth justice systems, it might also be argued that the administrative datasets that are available to link ACEs data and youth justice involvement can offer only a skewed set of data. For example, what might be referred to as “culturally-specific” childhood experiences are not recorded in current government databases or ACEs surveys, despite their potential importance. These might include experiences relating to cultural dislocation, losses of cultural practice, forced family removals, and experiences of individual and systemic racism—all of which can be considered potentially traumatic and have been identified as likely to contribute to subsequent youth offending (e.g., Butcher et al., 2020). Child protection authorities have also been criticized for having a disproportionate focus on Aboriginal families and for ignoring cultural differences in child rearing (e.g., Delfabbro et al., 2010), with similar criticisms leveled at the police in relation to the over-surveillance of minority groups.

A related consideration is that the focus in much developmental research on standard indicators of risk is individual-focused, with other potentially relevant variables not routinely considered (Fogarty et al., 2018). These include social determinants of health data (such as employment, income, housing, community cohesion) and information about access to health resources that promote wellbeing (such as cultural connection, identity, resilience, and empowerment through, for example, working with elders). Although the survey we employed in our study did include some questions about community violence and racism, it was nonetheless framed at the individual level. We were aware that some researchers have advocated for further items to be added to ACEs questionnaires (such as poverty; e.g., Finkelhor et al., 2013) and that there are now multiple ACEs questionnaires (e.g., the ACE-IQ developed by the World Health Organization). However, these innovations do not get over the hurdle that some experiences cannot be easily identified through a simple “yes” or “no” rating. We also felt that it would be conceptually and empirically problematic to simply aggregate the number of negative life events.

Homogenizing and Stereotyping Culture?

As a state-wide project we were always mindful that any data we collected would relate to people from many different cultural communities and that even the apparently simple act of creating a variable such as “Aboriginal” would—in one stroke—mask the considerable diversity that exists between groups. A recent study of 42 sentencing remarks in the South Australian Magistrates courts, for example, revealed that judges recognized that defendants were specifically Kaurna, Narrunga, Ngarrindjeri, Anangu (Pitjantjatjara), Adnyamathanha, and Kokatha people (McLachlan, 2021) and stereotyping this level of cultural diversity under a single metric would most likely provide those who might ultimately use our research findings with fairly limited information about where to focus efforts to improve policy and practice (and who to partner with to do this). Or perhaps they might simply assume that similar processes and experiences apply across cultural groups (i.e., that universal or state-wide responses will prove effective)? There is a need then to understand the different pathways that potentially exist between ACEs and justice system involvement in each community or cultural group, even though this type of information is not currently available. For us, this again reminds us of the need for caution before making what might be considered sweeping statements on the basis of homogenized datasets.

How Meaningful is Engagement With Community Stakeholders?

As noted earlier in this paper, in addition to the ethical review process required by the funding body and the university, we approached a community representative in the early stages of the project to discuss our aims, intentions, and how we saw the potential contribution of our work. We also consulted with Aboriginal practitioners in the government’s Department for Human Services. We sought to communicate our intention to work in ways that are consistent with the need to build trust and understanding about quantitative research methodologies, as well as to advocate for the adoption of Indigenous research methodologies. This also involved acknowledging the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty to child protection and youth justice research (see the work of the Maiam nayri Wingara Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Sovereignty Collective; https://mkstudy.com.au/indigenousdatasovereigntyprinciples/). We were mindful, at the time, of the numerous invitations that some members of the community receive to participate—and, in effect, to endorse—research that they would be unlikely to have any substantive involvement in. Nonetheless it felt important to at least provide an opportunity for feedback before the project developed too far. The youth justice project reference group was also in a good position to assist with the interpretation of the findings– to help us, for example, consider how historical and cultural causes might be important and/or to identify any implications for the provision of services to address the consequences of trauma. Our data, we felt, could be used by these stakeholders to develop a rationale for additional services to support young Aboriginal and Torres Strait people in their efforts to process adverse life experiences and protect them against future adversity as well as to promote the better coordination and leadership of these services. The work of Wanganeen (2008) provides a good example of this approach.

Considerations for Future Research

In writing this paper our aim has been to illustrate just some of the many considerations that potentially arise when conducting quantitative research that concerns criminal justice issues. We would suggest that these are not only relevant to our study but also to the much wider body of criminological research that is currently underway around the country, including large data linkage studies that will inform and direct government policy. These include projects in New South Wales (https://www.theirfuturesmatter.nsw.gov.au/investment-approach/investment-modelling) and Federal government initiatives to develop the “Indigenous Voice” co-design process (https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2021-01/apo-nid310489.pdf), as well as those studies that are underway in other settler-colonizer countries. At the same time there does appear to be an absence of comparative criminological literature discussing how best to conduct quantitative research in a context where cultural issues should clearly be at the fore (with the exception of the work of Walter & Suina, 2019), even though examples of how to do this are much more readily available in other disciplines (e.g., Kildea & Roe, 2019; Thurber et al., 2020). It is critically important, in our view, for all researchers to consider how they create knowledge that—either intentionally or unintentionally—overlooks key issues facing less powerful sections of the community.

We would, however, be very reluctant to describe our own work as an example of “decolonizing research” or, indeed, to present this project as a model for practice that others might follow. We have done little more than to let some members of the local Aboriginal community know about our work and provided some opportunities for them to offer feedback. Ultimately, this represents little more than a “sense check” given that our original research questions were not developed through any co-design or consultative process. There was also no process in place to consult with the range of other groups that have an interest in youth justice in this jurisdiction, and here we would include young people themselves. Although we would not want to assume that our interests and those of the community are necessarily mutually exclusive, we do have to acknowledge that the issues that we raise in this paper have only arisen as our study drew to a close and we had to decide how best to report and communicate our findings. We have faced a challenge in how to reconcile or integrate differing world views and epistemologies as researchers in the criminal justice space who sit outside of the community stakeholder groups. Our final reflection concerns the need for us as researchers to do more to cultivate technical skills among community members (related to data collection, analysis, and reporting) so that more active and meaningful involvement in future research might be possible. Such approaches go beyond a simple commitment for researchers to be sensitive to the need to protect against the deliberate or inadvertent exploitation of their data.

The challenge for comparative criminologists is to reflect both on the parameters of the data that they collect and on the impact of their work on those whom they study - in much the same way that quantitative academic researchers might seek to value the role that more theoretical research has to play in resolving social problems. A specific task for non-Indigenous criminologists in Australia is to find ways to better understand how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge can contribute to addressing the most pressing issue facing our justice system (i.e., the over-representation of young Indigenous people). For us, the choice is not between “qualitative” or “quantitative” research methodologies or even between “ethical” or “unethical” quantitative research, but between a range of imperfect methods with each inviting its own forms of error. The questions that we have asked ourselves are not about whether the quantitative method can eliminate human error, but whether it can give us a meaningful explanation for what is going on in the world and contribute to Indigenous control over research and what is done with the results.

Conclusion

We conclude this paper by returning to the original questions that we asked ourselves at the start of this paper: “Who is this research actually for?”; “What are we really trying to achieve?” and “How will we improve services and outcomes for families and communities of young justice-involved people?” Perhaps the most honest answer to these questions is that while we will, through this research, endeavor to provide further insight into the meaning of ACEs for young people in the youth justice system, it will likely do little to address the specific needs of Aboriginal young people in the South Australian justice system. But, as the need for Indigenous self-determination in criminological research continues to be recognized, this study has alerted us to the importance of reflecting critically on our role as “allied” researchers. As non-Indigenous researchers, we must always question how we can engage in this area of work without perpetuating inequalities or maintaining the status quo. We are mindful of Powell’s (2020) advice that, although many of us will want to solve human problems, we should also reflect on our own biases or lack of personal experience with the issues we study and always ask if we are the right people to do this work, are working in the right places, and have the right tools to succeed.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Australian Institute of Criminology, Criminology Research Grants. Catia Malvaso is also supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE200100679).

ORCID iD

Andrew Day

Notes

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