ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2024
Contamination bias in the estimation of child maltreatment causal effects on adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior problems.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Variation in early-life maltreatment effects on adolescent psychopathology due to contamination.Journal of traumatic stress · 2026Observational
- Childhood Sexual Abuse and Long-Term Risk of Self-Harm, Overdose, and Cardiovascular Disease.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- The impact of contamination bias when replicating maltreatment effects on child behavior problems.PloS one · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWhen unaddressed, contamination in child maltreatment research, in which some proportion of children recruited for a nonmaltreated comparison group are exposed to maltreatment, downwardly biases the significance and magnitude of effect size estimates. This study extends previous contamination research by investigating how a dual-measurement strategy of detecting and controlling contamination impacts causal effect size estimates of child behavior problems.
methodsThis study included 634 children from the LONGSCAN study with 63 cases of confirmed child maltreatment after age 8 and 571 cases without confirmed child maltreatment. Confirmed child maltreatment and internalizing and externalizing behaviors were recorded every 2 years between ages 4 and 16. Contamination in the nonmaltreated comparison group was identified and controlled by either a prospective self-report assessment at ages 12, 14, and 16 or by a one-time retrospective self-report assessment at age 18. Synthetic control methods were used to establish causal effects and quantify the impact of contamination when it was not controlled, when it was controlled for by prospective self-reports, and when it was controlled for by retrospective self-reports.
resultsRates of contamination ranged from 62% to 67%. Without controlling for contamination, causal effect size estimates for internalizing behaviors were not statistically significant. Causal effects only became statistically significant after controlling contamination identified from either prospective or retrospective reports and effect sizes increased by between 17% and 54%. Controlling contamination had a smaller impact on effect size increases for externalizing behaviors but did produce a statistically significant overall effect, relative to the model ignoring contamination, when prospective methods were used.
conclusionsThe presence of contamination in a nonmaltreated comparison group can underestimate the magnitude and statistical significance of causal effect size estimates, especially when investigating internalizing behavior problems. Addressing contamination can facilitate the replication of results across studies.
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Registered trials
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