Agreement between hospitalized adolescents' self-reports of maltreatment and witnessed home violence and clinician reports and medical records

Seventy-one consecutive psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents (34 males and 37 females) were systematically ashed about their experiences of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witnessing home violence using a reliable 46-it em self-report measure of maltreatment, the Traumatic Events Questionnaire- Adolescent Version (TEO-A), Subjects' responses were compared with a "best- estimate" source consisting of data from child protective service and polic e reports, medical records, and clinician interviews. Rates of agreement va ried from 88% (kappa value [kappa] = .75) for sexual abuse, to 83% (kappa = .65) for physical abuse, to 75% (kappa = .49) for witnessing home violence . Disclosures of maltreatment were not significantly influenced by the gend er, age, educational level, or ethnicity of the adolescent. Disclosures wer e highest for sexual abuse (86%) and lowest for witnessing home violence (6 8%). The results show that psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents' self-r eports of maltreatment experiences generally concur very well with best-est imate sources. Copyright (C) 1999 by W.B. Saunders Company.