Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45:2 (2004), pp 260273

Validity of adult retrospective reports of adverse

childhood experiences: review of the evidence
Jochen Hardt1 and Michael Rutter2
1

University of Mainz, Germany; 2Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK

Background: Influential studies have cast doubt on the validity of retrospective reports by adults of
their own adverse experiences in childhood. Accordingly, many researchers view retrospective reports
with scepticism. Method: A computer-based search, supplemented by hand searches, was used to
identify studies reported between 1980 and 2001 in which there was a quantified assessment of the
validity of retrospective recall of sexual abuse, physical abuse, physical/emotional neglect or family
discord, using samples of at least 40. Validity was assessed by means of comparisons with contemporaneous, prospectively obtained, court or clinic or research records; by agreement between retrospective reports of two siblings; and by the examination of possible bias with respect to differences
between retrospective and prospective reports in their correlates and consequences. Medium- to longterm reliability of retrospective recall was determined from studies in which the testretest period
extended over at least 6 months. Results: Retrospective reports in adulthood of major adverse
experiences in childhood, even when these are of a kind that allow reasonable operationalisation, involve a substantial rate of false negatives, and substantial measurement error. On the other hand,
although less easily quantified, false positive reports are probably rare. Several studies have shown
some bias in retrospective reports. However, such bias is not sufficiently great to invalidate retrospective
case-control studies of major adversities of an easily defined kind. Nevertheless, the findings suggest
that little weight can be placed on the retrospective reports of details of early experiences or on reports of
experiences that rely heavily on judgement or interpretation. Conclusion: Retrospective studies have a
worthwhile place in research, but further research is needed to examine possible biases in reporting. Keywords: Retrospective recall, prospective measures, validity, reliability, sexual abuse, physical
abuse, neglect, family discord, reporting bias.

The great majority of studies of the long-term psychopathological consequence of childhood experiences have used some type of case-control design in
which data on experiences have been obtained
through interviews in adult life that have relied on
retrospective recall. Accordingly, it is necessary to
know the extent to which such recall is likely to be
valid and, in particular, the extent to which it is free
from biases that might be relevant to the causal
hypothesis being tested. In this paper we address
that question by considering the findings from studies since 1980 with data that provided some form of
corroboration through contemporaneous research
measures or official records or through comparisons
with other informants reporting on the same experiences over the same time period. The background to
the issue is that early studies were largely negative in
their conclusions, with findings suggesting that retrospective reports were not to be relied on (e.g., Yarrow, Campbell, & Burton, 1970). In addition, in
recent years there has been an increasing call for
longitudinal studies on the assumption that they are
generally preferable to cross-sectional enquiries
using retrospective recall (Rutter, 1988; Wierson &
Forehand, 1994). Before presenting the empirical
findings on retrospective recall, it is necessary to
consider how far that assumption is correct. In
addition, we note some of the key methodological
issues that apply to the use of corroborative data.

Longitudinal vs. retrospective data

The expectation that retrospective recall is likely to
be unreliable and invalid stems from five main concerns. First, the vagaries of memory are bound to
lead to a degree of forgetting. That in itself might not
matter were it not for the additional possibility that
the degree of forgetting might be influenced by what
has happened subsequently. Thus, if adverse
experiences continue to be talked about through
involvement in treatment or because particular
family circumstances mean that they continue to be
relevant, early memories will be reinforced through
discussion and repetition of the story. There is also
the possibility that apparently recovered memories
may be brought about through biasing effects in
therapeutic experiences (Loftus, 1994).
Second, there is a general tendency to seek
meaning in memories (Schacter, 2001; Schacter,
Koutstaal, & Norman, 1996). Thus, Robbins (1963)
found that parents recalled their child rearing practices with inaccuracies in the direction of expert recommendations. On the whole, peoples memories of
whether an event or experience occurred tend to be
more accurate than their recall of the sequences of
timing of the same experiences. That may mean that
events that occurred after the onset of some disorder
are recalled as having preceded the onset (c.f. Chess,
Thomas, & Birch, 1966).

Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2004.

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Retrospective reports of childhood experiences

Third, people can only recall later what they were

aware of at the time. For example, Robins et al.
(1985) found that adults reports of whether their
family was ever temporarily on welfare when they
were young were often inaccurate simply because, as
children, they may not have realised that the family
were in receipt of welfare benefits at the time. Details
of family finances are not something that necessarily
impinges on young children, although they are likely
to have a general concept of whether the family was
rich or poor. Fourth, because of so-called infantile
amnesia, most people are unlikely to be able to
remember much of what took place in the first two or
three years or so of life (Lewis, 1995; Pillemer &
White, 1989).
Fifth, there is some evidence that what people remember may be influenced by their mood state at the
time of the retrospective reporting (Bower, 1981;
Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987; McFarland &
Buehler, 1998; Matt, Vazquez, & Campbell, 1992),
although research findings suggest that this potential bias may not be as great as sometimes supposed
(Brewin, Andrews, & Gotlib, 1993).
In addition, retrospective data have substantial
limitations with respect to causal inferences. That is
because, as a result of inaccuracies and biases in the
retrospective recall of time sequences, most crosssectional studies rely on between-group case-control
comparisons rather than within-individual change in
order to test causal hypotheses regarding the risk or
protective effects of experiences in childhood. For
obvious reasons, this constitutes a much less satisfactory test of the causal postulate (Farrington,
1988; Rutter, 1994; Rutter, Pickles, Murray, &
Eaves, 2001). In addition, there are the further disadvantages that there is poor leverage on possible
biases associated with non-cooperation or non-contact, poor opportunities for the assessment of heterogeneous or unexpected outcomes, and the
limitation that the control group has to be identified
at the time of outcome rather than at the time of the
experience of risk.
That would seem to add up to a formidable set of
problems. Nevertheless, these have to be set against
three crucial advantages: 1) convenience of sampling; 2) relatively low cost; and 3) a lack of any need
to wait for results while the children grow up. That
might lead to a conclusion that longitudinal studies
are always to be preferred, but that cross-sectional
studies using retrospective recall may constitute an
acceptable second-best. However, such a conclusion
would ignore the fact that longitudinal studies also
involve some important disadvantages, as well as
crucial strengths. The latter comprise five main assets: 1) the possibility of studying within-individual
change, as well as case-control comparisons; 2)
multiple data points over time provide a means of
dealing effectively with missing data; 3) good opportunities for contrasting social selection and social
causation (Dohrenwend et al., 1992); 4) the oppor-

261

tunity of separating person effects on the environment from environmental effects on the person (Bell,
1968; Bell & Chapman, 1986); and 5) the opportunity to assess attrition bias in a rigorous fashion.
The main limitations of longitudinal data comprise
five rather separate problems. First, some hidden
experiences are not likely to be reported contemporaneously in childhood. Most obviously this applies to sexual abuse within the family. Second,
when studying sequelae in adult life it is inevitable
that there has to be reliance on outdated measures
for the assessment of childhood experiences. That
may be a major problem when the concepts of what
constitute key experiences have changed over time.
Thus, few studies 20 or 30 years ago assessed differences among siblings in their experiences or
relationships in the family, and few used measures
of attachment that would be regarded as satisfactory
today. Third, although some long-term longitudinal
studies have been remarkably successful in maintaining the cooperation of samples (see, e.g., Cairns,
Elder, & Costello, 1996; Fergusson, Horwood, &
Nagin, 2000a; Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001),
attrition is often a problem, if only because individuals move abroad or to a distant area in the
same county and cannot be traced. Fourth, longitudinal data have to rely on retrospective recall for
measures of experiences since the last interview,
which will often involve reporting over a period of
several years. Finally, longitudinal data are very expensive to collect, the costs being very much greater
than for cross-sectional studies using samples of the
same size.

Measurement issues
The assessment of retrospective recall is necessarily
reliant on the quality of the measures of experiences
at both time points and on the comparability of the
measurement at the time in childhood and as retrospectively reported in adult life. Many studies fall
down on this criterion because the measures in
childhood were rather vague and global. Thus, Yarrow et al. (1970) relied on nursery school records
deriving from unstandardised parental reports.
Four main ways to check the validity of retrospective reports have been used in this paper: i) Direct comparisons of retrospective reports with prior
official records (e.g., from schools, hospitals or
courts); ii) similar comparisons with prior parental
reports; iii) agreement between the retrospective reports of two siblings; and iv) indirect comparison in
terms of the differences between retrospective and
prospective reports in relation to risk correlates and
outcome.
A particular problem with respect to comparability
arises when the measures at the childhood time
period derive from the parent and those obtained
retrospectively in adulthood from the subject (i.e.,
the person who was a child at the first time period).

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Jochen Hardt and Michael Rutter

That is because numerous studies have shown that

the contemporaneous agreement of reports by parents and by children show only weak agreement.
Thus, this has been found to be so for reports of
experiences such as stressful life events (Sandberg
et al., 1993), of parenting style (Sessa, Avenevoli,
Steinberg, & Morris, 2001) and of the extent to which
parents differ in their criticism of each of their children (Carbonneau et al., 2001), just as it has been
for accounts of symptomatology (Achenbach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987; Rutter, Graham, Chadwick, & Yule, 1976; Rutter, Tizard, & Whitmore,
1970). If there is poor agreement at the time, one
cannot use the agreement over time between different informants as an index of accuracy of retrospective recall.
When reports of various family members were
compared, the strongest agreement is often seen
between siblings (Schwarz, Barton-Henry, &
Pruzinsky, 1985). However, there is also reason to
suppose that agreement between siblings in their
memory of early experiences may be misleadingly
high in the case of severely negative chronic or
recurrent experiences that have been the subject of
much discussion between the siblings. When this
is the case, the supposed corroboration of retrospective recall through agreement between the
accounts of two children in the same family is
likely to reflect, at least in part, agreement on an
ongoing family percept, rather than discrete memories as such.
A further major problem is that many studies of
the validity of retrospective recall have used samples
confined to individuals experiencing abuse that led
to either police action or clinical referral. The lack of
a non-abused group means that, although data are
obtained on false negatives in retrospective recall,
there can be no measure of false positives. In addition it cannot be assumed that the recall of experiences that led to a major intervention will be the
same as that for similar experiences that either remained secret or did not result in intervention.
Accordingly, in reviewing the evidence we place most
weight on epidemiological studies that include participants both with and without the adverse experiences being studied.
However, even with representative epidemiological
samples, there is often the serious limitation that the
prospective baseline data may concern a limited
period of time in childhood whereas the retrospective
reporting will cover the whole of the childhood years.
The consequence is that the supposed false positives
in the retrospective reports may reflect what was
missed in the prospective reports rather than errors
in the memories looking back.
The ways in which the probands were asked about
adverse experiences are likely to contribute to the
validity of the reports. Obviously, vague or unclear
formulations of the questions produce ambiguous
results. Interviews have generally been seen to be

more valid than questionnaires because they allow a

clarification of potential misunderstandings, although this assumption has rarely been tested. On
the other hand, questionnaires have a possible
advantage in anonymity, which may facilitate valid
responses to questions on sensitive issues.

Aims of review
The purpose of this paper was to review the empirical
research findings on the validity of retrospective recall with respect to four main domains of important
risk experiences in childhood: 1) sexual abuse; 2)
physical abuse or severe physical punishment; 3)
physical or emotional neglect; and 4) chronic family
conflict or disharmony. Various other domains of
potential interest (e.g., verbal abuse or poor parental
supervision) could not be reviewed because we found
no studies that examined their validity.

Methods
To identify the relevant literature, a computer-based
search in the databases medline and PsycINFO
using the full-text search strategy retrospect* and
[reliability, validity] and [adverse child* exper*,
child* abu*, neglect] or [parent* bonding, parent*
rearing, parent* relationship, parent* attachment]
was conducted for the years 1980 to 2001. It produced 18 articles. Two were reviews, 9 reported
studies with systematic evaluation of retrospective
recall in adulthood of adverse experiences in childhood, and 7 were irrelevant to the subject. Hand
searching led to the identification of a further 30
reports. Attention was confined to studies using
quantitative measures on samples of at least 40
participants and in which corroboration was available through contemporaneous prospectively obtained court or clinic or research records, or through
comparisons between siblings for their retrospective
recall of the same experiences. This resulted in a
reduction to 8 studies in which there were validating
data for retrospective recall (see Table 1). In addition,
attention was paid to a further 6 studies with findings on long-term reliability of retrospective recall
(see Table 2). A list of all identified studies is available from the authors.

Results
Contemporary official records and retrospective
recall
Williams (1994) conducted a study on 129 women
with clinically documented severe childhood sexual
abuse (CSA). The majority (86%) were AfricanAmerican. About 17 years after having been treated
for the abuse, the women were re-interviewed about
CSA without being told that a comparison was going

(Brown et al., 1998;

Johnson et al., 1999)

(Maughan et al., 1995)

(Robins et al., 1985)

(Robins et al., 1985)

(Widom & Shepard, 1996;

Widom & Morris, 1997;
Raphael et al., 2001)

(Williams, 1994;
Banyard & Williams, 1996)

(Henry et al., 1994)

Contemporary reports from the Dunedin

Longitudinal Study (n 1,000) were
compared to retrospective recall

Retrospective reports compared

to court records in 75 sexually
abused females, 242 controls,
20 sexually abused males, 273 controls
110 physically abused cases, 545 controls
129 clinically documented abused
females were re-interviewed

Reports of 52 patients/siblings,
39 controls/siblings compared

In a representative sample of 466

youths/adults retrospective reports
were compared to official register
Parents of 121 high-risk subjects
and 177 controls were interviewed
at subject ages < 15, retrospective
reports of subjects at age 27
310 patients from a child
guidance clinic were
re-interviewed 30 years later

87 sister pairs were interviewed

about themselves and their sister

Study description

Note: CSA: childhood sexual abuse; CPA: childhood physical abuse; NEG: neglect.

(Bifulco et al., 1997)

Main references

Study

Table 1 Summary of validity studies

Family conflict
Childparent
attachment

CSA

CSA
CPA

Ever in correctional
institution

Early home
environment

Parental negativity

Mixed category of
abuse and neglect

NEG

CPA

CSA

Childhood adversities

.21
.40

correlation

.14
.42
).01

.72
.14
.74
).01
.77
).09

Kappa
both abused
one abused
both abused
one abused
both neglected
one neglected

mother pro-, child

retrospective stability
in child report

physical violence
interfamilial
intercourse

4251% of the
questions showed
significant agreement

if
if
if
if
if
if

.62

.64
.17
.60

.38.52
.20.44
.76.84

.90.92

.11.20
.40.50

.41

Sensitivity

Estimates of validity

yes vs. no

CSA in females
CSA in males
CPA

if outcome good
if outcome poor

not always with

two parents family
ever on welfare

if outcome good
if outcome poor

Retrospective reports of childhood experiences

263

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Jochen Hardt and Michael Rutter

Table 2 Summary of reliability studies

Estimates of reliability
Study

Main references

Study description

Childhood adversities

(Cherlin & Horiuchi, 1980)

(Fergusson et al., 2000b)

Representative sample
of 2,750 adolescents
983 young adults

(Finlay-Jones et al., 1981)

Not always with both

natural parents
CSA
Physical punishment
Death of parent
Father goes to war
Parent leaves home
to find work
Parental Bonding
Instrument

(Gerlsma et al., 1994)

(Offer et al., 2000)

(Wilhelm & Parker, 1990)

244 Community
residents

315 psychiatric and

non-psychiatric
patients
67 males at ages
14 and 48
153 students

Family relations,
early home
Parental Bonding
Instrument

Correlation
.84
.80
.45
.47
1.00
.82
.66
.80.90

whites
blacks
three yrs interval

eight months interval

six months testretest

almost no significant correlations

.67.82
.56.72

five years testretest

ten years testretest

Note: CSA: childhood sexual abuse.

to be made (although the women may have made a

connection because the researcher specified that it
was a follow-up of women who had received medical
care at the city hospital). It is possible that this may
have led to an unusually high level of recall. An
extensive examination of abuse experiences was
undertaken through 19 structured questions (Williams, 1995). Sixty-two per cent of the women
reported the initial event, but 38% did not. Twothirds of the women who had experienced severe
sexual abuse reported incidents of sexual abuse
other than those originally recorded (plus or minus
the original event). Since the subjects reported
additional events of sexual abuse the underreporting of the original event was interpreted as
being due to forgetting or repression rather than of
conscious hiding. This interpretation was supported
by the finding that events in early childhood were
less likely to be reported than similar events that
occurred later.
In a further analysis, Banyard and Williams (1996)
examined specific aspects of the sexual abuse (i.e.,
use of physical force, genital penetration, abuse by
family member). They found very low agreements for
these three factors between the prospective and the
retrospective assessment (kappa values of .14, .43
and ).02, respectively). Since 68% of the women
have been abused more than once, they may not
have remembered the exact circumstances of the
index abuse. Furthermore, not all aspects of the
abuse were necessarily reported to the clinicians
who saw them in childhood. In addition, they compared the contemporary and retrospective measures
of abuse features with respect to associations with
various measures of adult adaptation. The associations were weak with both sets of measures (beta
coefficients ranging from ).13 to .29) with no consistent pattern in differences between retrospective
and prospective measures.

Widom and Morris (1997) studied a sample of 75

women with court documented cases of childhood
sexual abuse, some 20 years after the event. Two
hundred and forty-two controls were interviewed in
the same way. Four structured questions were used
to examine abusive experiences (Widom, 1997). Of
the 75 women who had had documented sexual
abuse, 64% retrospectively reported sexual abuse as
compared with 24% of controls. The comparable
figures for sex with an older person and sex against
their will were 40% vs. 8% and 55% vs. 17%. Out of
19 men with documented cases of childhood sexual
abuse, only 16% reported having been sexually
abused (vs. 5% controls) with 16% vs. 3% reporting
having had sex against their will. Although the
numbers of cases were tiny, it is striking that far
fewer abused men retrospectively reported having
experienced sexual abuse.
Widom and Shepard (1996) also studied 110
subjects with court-documented cases of childhood
physical abuse (CPA), together with 543 controls,
re-interviewing them 20 years after the event. The
retrospective recall was assessed by means of the
Straus (1990) Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and a
specially designed self-report measure (SRCAP)
focusing on the experience of serious physical abuse.
Sixty per cent of the subjects with documented
abuse retrospectively reported having experienced
very severe violence (as measured by the CTS), as
compared with 21% of controls. The difference on
severe violence was less (69% vs. 44%). On the
SRCAP scale 26% of the group with documented
abuse reported being hurt sufficiently seriously to
need medical attention, as compared with 1.4% of
the control group. The comparable figures for
admission to hospital were 13.2% vs. .4%. Recall was
found to be unaffected by whether or not the subjects were aged above or below 5 years at the time of
the abuse.

Retrospective reports of childhood experiences

Widom and her colleagues (Widom & Shepard,

1996; Widom & Morris, 1997) also examined retrospective recall in a sample suffering neglect before
the age of 11 years that had led to court substantiation. Neglect was defined as an extreme failure to
provide food, clothing, shelter or medical attention.
In their sample of 1,196 individuals, 480 showed at
least one officially documented case of neglect, and
384 individuals reported experiences of neglect in a
retrospective report. No data for direct agreement
concerning neglect have been reported so far.
Brown and colleagues (Brown, Cohen, Johnson, &
Salzinger, 1998; Johnson, Cohen, Brown, Smailes,
& Bernstein, 1999) compared retrospective reports
of a combined category labelled child maltreatment
(defined as neglect, sexual or physical abuse) with
reports of the New York State Central Register of
Child Abuse and Neglect in a representative sample
of 466 youths. A total of 58 persons in this study said
that they had been maltreated, but only 10 (17%) of
these self-reported cases were confirmed by the
register. Conversely, of the 46 cases of maltreatment
for this sample on the register only 19 (41%) of them
were confirmed by self-report. The overlap between
both assessments can be regarded as only low, the
kappa coefficient between the two being just .11
(Johnson et al., 1999). The distributions of the type
of maltreatment were also different for the two
methods of assessment. In self-reports, physical
abuse was the most common (a rate of 50%) followed
by sexual abuse (31%) and neglect (28%). The sum
exceeds 100% because of multiple reports. In the
register, neglect showed the highest rate (80%), followed by physical (43%) and sexual abuse (15%).
Unfortunately, the authors did not report specific
confirmation rates for the three types of maltreatment.
To date, only limited findings on the recall of neglect have been reported but it is clear that the recall
of physical and sexual abuse by children experiencing neglect was almost as high as that reported by
abused individuals. It is noteworthy that the rate of
self-reported neglect (unlike that for abuse) is below
the rate in official reports.
Robins et al. (1985) reported findings from the 30year follow-up study of child guidance clinic parents
and controls in which the retrospective recall in
adulthood of childhood adversities was compared
with the baseline data in the contemporaneous clinic
records. As they noted, the latter were not as
standardised as desirable and they varied in the
years of childhood they covered. The authors noted
(but with the statistical significance of group differences not reported) that, on the whole, healthier
adults were more likely than those with an antisocial
personality disorder to deny some serious adversities
reported in the records. The implication is that
healthy adults under-report rather than that impaired adults over-report. A summary of validity
studies is given in Table 1.

265

Contemporaneous parental reports

and retrospective recall
by the children in adult life
As with almost all areas of psychopathology and life
experiences, low levels of agreement have been found
between the reports of parents and children. Thus,
Jouriles et al. (Jouriles, Mehta, McDonald, & Francis, 1997) found correlations in the .34 to .46 range
for the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS). Fink and colleagues (Fink, Bernstein, Handelsman, Foote, &
Lovejoy, 1995) found high internal consistency (an
alpha coefficient of about .82) for the childhood
trauma questionnaire (CTQ) but low agreement (an r
of about .38) with therapist assessments of the severity and frequency of physical abuse. Similarly,
studies with the PBI and EMBU have found correlations in the .40 to .50 range between the ratings of
different family members (Parker, 1981; Schumacher, Hinz, & Brahler, in press). Even lower correlations (circa .30) have been found (Schwarz et al.,
1985) with the Childs Report of Parental Bonding
(CRPBI) (Schaefer, 1965). Perhaps surprisingly, the
agreement between mothers and fathers ratings
was particularly low (.29). Parents also show low
stability in their reports on parenting. In the child
rearing questionnaire (CRQ), the correlations between contemporary parental report and parental
recall 25 years later were in between r ).02 and
.45 (Cournoyer & Rohner, 1996).
Maughan, Pickles, and Quinton (1995) used a
long-term longitudinal study that combined high
risk and general population samples, with prospective contemporaneous parental accounts of
parental negativity in childhood, in order to examine
subjects retrospective accounts in adulthood of
harsh discipline in the childhood years (a similar,
but not identical construct). In this study, maternal
and paternal negativity were assessed by interviewer
ratings based on five dimensions: warmth, positive
remarks, criticism, irritability, and exposure to
hostile behaviour. Factor analyses yielded both a
positive and a negative dimension. The rates of parental negativity were about 20% in the prospective
measure, and rather lower on retrospective reporting
(1015%). The overall level of agreement over time
(and across informants) was low, with kappa values
of .19 to .24. When the subjects recalled a lack of
negativity the contemporaneous accounts usually
agreed (a false negative rate of .15 to .18); but when
they reported the presence of negativity, the contemporaneous accounts often disagreed (a false
positive rate of .59 to .65), despite the higher rate of
negativity reported by parents at the time.
Henry and colleagues (Henry, Moffitt, Caspi,
Langley, & Silva, 1994) used the Dunedin longitudinal study for a similar purpose, the retrospective recall being assessed at 18 years of age in
relation to experiences between 7 and 15 years for
which contemporaneous measures were available.

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The subjects report of family conflict was assessed

on an 11-point scale completed in relation to a single
question on arguing, fighting, shouting, or losing
temper; the prospective measure was provided by a
maternal questionnaire measure of family conflict
completed when the subjects were 7, 9, 13 and 15
years of age. The correlation with the mean measure
of family conflict over these 4 time points was .21
an agreement closely comparable to that found by
Maughan et al. (1995), both being based on a retrospective subject report and a prospective parental
report. In both cases, the correlation is bound to
have been depressed by the fact that the two measures used different informants.
Childparent attachment was similarly assessed
in the Dunedin Longitudinal Study by an 11-point
scale based on a single question (When you were
between 7 and 15 years old, how close did you feel to
your parents? but the baseline measure, unlike that
for conflict, also derived from the child (with a 12point scale used at ages 13 and 15). The correlation
over time with the mean score from these two
administrations was .40. The finding that this was
twice as high as that for conflict is in keeping with
the inference that the correlation for conflict was
depressed by reliance on different informants.

Retrospective corroboration of siblings

Bifulco and colleagues (Bifulco, Brown, Lillie, &
Jarvis, 1997) sought to assess the validity of retrospective recall of childhood sexual abuse by means
of corroboration by a sister. A series of 87 sister
pairs, who were not more than 5 years apart in age
and who were reared together in the same household, were interviewed independently by different
interviewers. The sisters were specially selected from
a community survey so that over half had had adverse childhood experiences. Forty-seven out of the
87 were selected on the basis of reporting problematic parentchild relationships on a screening
questionnaire. The overall response rate to the
screening procedure was 45% but it appeared that
some of this was a consequence of wrong addresses
in the records. When these were excluded the estimated response rate was 70%. The extent to which
either the 30% non-participation or the requirement
that there be a sister within 5 years of the age of the
first sister introduced bias is not known. A detailed
semi-structured interview with many probes was
used to derive an interviewer rating of abuse (Bifulco,
Brown, & Harris, 1994). Neglect was defined as
physical and/or emotional neglect and was based on
events such as forgetting a birthday, sending the
child to school hungry or with insufficient clothes, or
sending a child outside the house because parents
wanted to watch TV. The rates of neglect and sexual
abuse were 21% and the rate of physical abuse 38%.
In only some 6% to 8% of cases of abuse was the
abuse known to the authorities.

Only half the reports of sexual abuse were confirmed by the other sister but the corroboration rates
were substantially higher for physical abuse (71%)
and for neglect (82%) giving rise to kappa values of
.58, .66 and .80 respectively. What was striking,
however, was that corroboration was almost entirely
dependent on whether or not both sisters had
experienced the same adversity. When they had (as
was the case in the great majority of pairs) the kappa
values ranged from .72 to .77 but when they had not
(as was the case for 20 pairs with respect to both
physical and sexual abuse and 8 pairs with respect
to neglect), agreement was essentially zero, with
kappa values ranging from ).09 to .14. Bifulco et al.
(1997) reported that corroboration did not seem to be
a function of confiding between the sisters, but the
almost total lack of corroboration in the case of pairs
with discordant experiences clearly casts serious
doubt on the reality of the validation. As the authors
noted, it could be argued that the sisters were unable
to differentiate between their own and the others
experiences. Whether or not that constitutes the
explanation, the findings would certainly seem to
raise questions about the utility of this research
strategy to test the validity of retrospective recall.
Robins et al. (1985) also used a sibling comparison design to test the validity of retrospective
recall. The degree of agreement in recall of pairs of
adults aged 3050 years in which one was a psychiatric patient was compared with pairs of controls
neither of whom were psychiatric patients. The
agreement within pairs of both sorts was said to be
well above chance levels for a range of variables
reflecting different aspects of family discord and did
not differ between patients and controls. Robins
et al. reported a significant agreement for 40% to
50% of 150 questions but actual levels of agreement
were not reported.

Bias in associations based on retrospective recall

The relatively high rate of reported sexual abuse
among those without a court record of such abuse,
for example, need not mean that these were false
positives, because only a proportion of cases of
abuse get reported to the authorities. By contrast,
the denial of abuse by a substantial minority of the
abused women and a majority of the abused men
probably does usually mean a false negative. A key
issue is whether this denial/forgetting gives rise to
bias. One way of approaching this question is to
examine the associations with adverse outcomes.
Widom and Morris (1997) found that the association
between sexual abuse and alcoholism was much the
same on self-report (an odds ratio of 1.66) as on
official report (OR 1.72); it was also fairly similar
for suicide attempts, although the association was
stronger on self-report (OR of 3.75 vs. 2.90). There
was, however, a difference with respect to depression
in that there was no association at all for the official

Retrospective reports of childhood experiences

report, but an odds ratio of 3.00 for self-report,

suggesting a likely bias in retrospective recall.
Raphael, Widom, and Lange (2001) found much
the same difference in relation to pain in adulthood.
Court-documented sexual abuse showed almost no
association with pain (OR 1.39, p > .10), whereas
retrospectively assessed abuse was so associated
(OR 2.20, p < .001). The findings for physical
abuse were similar. Again, the association was significant only with the retrospective measure
(OR 2.07) and not the prospective one
(OR 1.23), suggesting bias in the retrospective reports. The key datum is the non-significant effect of
the prospective measure of sexual abuse. The only
way in which this could be a consequence of undocumented abuse in the controls would be if the
rate of abuse approached the 100% in the cases
clearly an implausible occurrence and one out of
keeping with their own retrospective findings.
Widom and her colleagues (Widom & Shepard,
1996; Widom & Morris, 1997) also examined neglect
in their sample. The prediction of adult chronic pain
showed almost the same pattern as for abuse (an OR
of 1.20 for documented abuse versus an OR of 2.38
for retrospectively reported abuse Raphael et al.,
2001).
In the Maughan et al. (1995) study, agreement
was further examined according to whether or not
the subjects showed overall poor social functioning.
It was found that agreement over time for the presence of negativity was substantially worse when the
outcome was good than when it was poor (sensitivities of .11 to .20 versus .40 to .50). In other words,
the bias comprised a tendency for people with good
functioning in adult life to forget early parental
negativity rather than a tendency for people with
poor functioning retrospectively to exaggerate negativity that was not reported contemporaneously in
childhood.
Brown et al. (1998) also examined various risk
factors that were associated with each method of
assessment of maltreatment. Both methods independently showed associations between maternal
sociopathy, maternal youth, low parental involvement and low parental warmth and childhood maltreatment. In the data from the register, but not from
self-reports, ethnicity, handicapped child, large
family size, low child verbal intelligence, low income,
low maternal education, maternal alienation,
maternal anger, maternal dissatisfaction, maternal
illness, parental conflict, paternal sociopathy, poor
marital quality, single parent and dependency on
welfare were associated with maltreatment. In the
self-reports, but not in the data from the register, the
factors child temperament, early separation from
mother, harsh punishment, maternal external locus
of control and negative life events turned out to be
associated with maltreatment. Unfortunately, the
strengths of these associations were not reported in
this study. But it can be stated that there were many

267

more factors that showed an association to the official records than to self-reports in this study.

Temporal stability of retrospective recall

There is no reason to suppose that the immediate
retest or inter-rater reliability of retrospective recall
measures would differ from those of any other
measure. On the other hand, there is a need to
consider the extent to which reports in adulthood of
childhood experiences vary over time. We examined
this issue through reference to four studies that have
examined recall as reassessed after a period of at
least 6 months.
The temporal stability of retrospective reports of
physical and of sexual abuse was examined by Fergusson, Horwood, and Woodward (2000b) who
asked a cohort of approximately 1,000 young adults
at the ages of 18 and 21 years for occurrences of
childhood sexual abuse that had occurred before
they had reached the age of 16. The probands were
asked if anyone had ever attempted to involve them
in any of a serious of 15 sexual activities when they
did not want this to happen. Any positive answer
was followed up by open-ended questions. A kappa
of .45 was found for the agreement between comparable measures at the two time points. The consistency of reports of having been abused was low
(about .50), whereas the stability of the reporting
that they had not been abused was quite high (about
.95). Inconsistencies in reporting were unrelated to
the individuals psychiatric state at either age. A latent class statistical model confirmed the impression
that there was substantial measurement error, with
a false negative rate of about 50%. Although the
possibility of false positives could not be tested directly, the findings were consistent with an assumption that these were rare. The results of the study
have three important implications. First, major errors in reporting arise in adolescence or adult life
and not just in the loss of memories in childhood.
Second, these errors have substantial effects on
prevalence estimates, with the greatest accuracy
being provided by a combination of reports. Third,
the errors have a negligible effect in the estimates of
relative risks for adult psychopathology deriving
from the experience of abuse. Thus, the relative risk
for a suicide attempt was 3.4 on the 18-year report
as compared with 3.3 on the 21-year report and an
estimated 3.7 from the latent class model for the
true effect. The comparable figures for major
depression were 1.7, 1.6 and 1.7; and for drug
dependence 2.1, 1.7 and 1.9.
Finlay-Jones et al. (Finlay-Jones, Scott, DuncanJones, Byrne, & Henderson, 1981) examined the
temporal stability of reports of parental death and
divorce by interviewing 244 community residents
twice (18 months apart) with respect to separations
from their parents before the age of 14 years that
had lasted at least six months. Not surprisingly,

268

Jochen Hardt and Michael Rutter

there was complete stability for reports of parental

death and almost complete stability for reports of
parental divorce (95%). However, the reports of other
separations showed less consistency over time, with
only some 50% to 73% of separations being reported
on both occasions. No psychopathological features
were found to differentiate reliable and unreliable
respondents.
Cherlin and Horiuchi (1980) interviewed 4,000
women aged 14 to 24 years twice, with 4 years between the two interviews. The focus was on whom
the respondent was living with at 14 years. Of those
who reported first time that they were living with
their natural parents, nearly all (98% of whites and
94% of blacks) reported the same at the second
interview. However, of those who initially reported
some other family arrangement, about 30% changed
their answer on the second interview, more often
than not in a socially desirable direction.
Offer and colleagues (Offer, Kaiz, Howard, & Bennett, 2000) compared the reports of family life and
relationships as given at the age of 14 years with
those retrospectively recalled at the age of 48 years.
The sample (all male) was chosen to represent normal healthy adolescents and the questions referred
to judgements about normal variation in life experiences. Thus, the questions included Was the discipline you received unfair? and Was love withheld as a
punishment? The findings showed only chance
agreements between the reports at these two age
periods but both the choice of sample and the generality of the questions mean that the results are
non-contributory with respect to the recall of serious
family adversity.
The Parental Bonding Inventory (PBI) (Parker,
1979; Parker et al., 1997) and the Egna Minnen
Betraffande Uppfostran (EMBU) (Perris, Jacobsson,
Lindstrrom, von Knorring, & Perris, 1980) are probably the two most widely used instruments for the
retrospective assessment of parenting. Both have
good internal consistency (Cronbachs alpha usually
between .80 and .90) and 6-month testretest correlations of about .80 (Gerlsma, Kramer, Scholing, &
Emmelkamp, 1994). Ten-year testretest correlations have been somewhat lower, but still quite high
in the .56 to .72 range in a study of university
students, with repeat testing available on 163 of the
170 people who completed the PBI initially (Wilhelm
& Parker, 1990, see also Cournoyer & Rohner,
1996). Gerlsma et al. (1994; Gerlsma, Das, & Emmelkamp, 1993) found also that the retrospective
recall of childhood relationships was only very
slightly affected by current mood this accounting
for only some 6% of the variance. In a repeated
measurement analysis, descriptions of childhood
remained stable even when the mood state changed
markedly (see also Gotlib, Mount, Cordy, & Whiffen,
1988; Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987; LivianosAldana, Rojo-Moreno, Rodrigo-Monto, & CuquerellaBenaven 2001).

Effects of mood on retrospective recall

of risk experiences
Experimental studies using mood-induction techniques have shown that depressive mood fosters the
recall of unhappy memories and inhibits the recall of
happy ones (Bower, 1981; Teasdale, 1983). As we
have noted, although this could create biases in recall, the empirical evidence suggests that such a bias
is usually relatively minor (Brewin et al., 1993).
However, research findings over the past 20 years or
so have shown that a broader view of influences on
memory is required (Ceci, Bronfenbrenner, & BakerSennett, 1994; Koriat, Goldsmith, & Pansky, 2000;
Rubin, 1996). Memory needs to be conceptualised in
terms, not of a fixed storehouse of deposited bits of
information, but rather of a perception of the past
that is open to influences from attempts to provide
meaning, and from cognitive processes involving
selection, abstraction, interpretation, integration,
and reconstruction, as well as from the effects of
repeated recall and rehearsal (or the lack of both).
This may mean, amongst other things, that mental
health is associated with a filtering out of negative
memories or their re-representation in non-threatening terms (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Similarly, although the clinical state of depression tends to be
accompanied by a focus on painful memories, it is
also associated with a tendency to recall the past in
overly general terms (Williams, 1996). Interestingly,
this tendency to overgeneralise seems to persist even
after remission of the depression (Mackinger, Pachinger, Leibetseder, & Fartacek, 2000; Segal, Williams, Teasdale, & Gemar, 1996), although the
effects on dysfunctional cognitions may not do so
(Brosse, Craighead, & Craighead, 1999). Up to now,
these features of autobiographical memory have
mainly been considered with respect to their implications for the course of depression (see, e.g.,
Brewin, Reynolds, & Tata, 1999). We suggest that it
would also be useful to apply the findings to the issues involved in the validity of retrospective recall,
but that has not happened so far to any appreciable
extent.

False and recovered memories

In recent years, much concern has been expressed
over the possibility that some retrospective accounts
of childhood experiences of abuse are false (Ceci,
Gilstrap, & Fitneva, 2002; Loftus, 1993; Loftus &
Ketcham, 1994). The concerns have arisen because
of instances in which, usually in conjunction with
psychological therapy, individuals recall abuse that
they had not previously mentioned to anyone and
which they had apparently completely forgotten.
There is evidence from follow-up studies (see above)
that a substantial proportion (about a third) of
individuals known to have suffered abuse do not
report such abuse when interviewed in adult life.

Retrospective reports of childhood experiences

How often it has been simply forgotten, how often

actively repressed, and how often just not reported is
not clear from the research. Nevertheless, it may be
concluded that some experiences of abuse are not
retrieved in adult memories. What is much more
difficult to determine is whether, outside of the special circumstances of therapies designed to induce
recall of early trauma, people (other than rarely)
produce memories of serious childhood adversities
that did not occur. Provided that good interviewing
techniques or good quality questionnaires are employed, it seems unlikely that this constitutes a
serious problem in the use of retrospective recall in
epidemiological samples. However, the research
findings do not permit quantification of that risk.

Infantile amnesia
It is well known that most adults have few, if any,
memories of discrete events occurring during the
first two years of life. This conclusion has been
supported by systematic studies of both ordinary
events (such as the birth of a sibling or admission to
hospital see Usher & Neisser, 1993) or very unusual ones such as urethral catheterisation (Goodman, Quas, Batterman-Fauce, Riddlesberger, &
Kuhn, 1994). The evidence suggests that it is not
that the experiences are not registered at the time
(because even quite young children can remember
events that occurred some months ago), but rather
that recall in adulthood is unusual. This may be
because concepts in adult life are so different from
those in childhood (Howe & Courage, 1993; Lewis,
1995). Alternatively, following the emergence of
conversational language, repeated retrieval of memories through conversations about the past may
preserve them over time (Nelson, 1993). Or perhaps
repeated retrieval through non-language, as well as
language, stimuli (because both increase greatly
post-infancy) may increase the accessibility of
memories (Barr & Hayne, 2000). Whatever the explanation, it is clear that adults cannot be expected
to have an accurate recall of events that took place in
infancy.

Methods of data gathering

There have been several studies that have sought to
compare different methods of data gathering (see,
e.g., Martin, Anderson, Romans, Mullen, & OShea,
1993; McGee, Wolfe, Yuen, Wilson, & Carnochan,
1995) and several reviews on the same topic (see,
e.g., Amaya-Jackson, Socolar, Hunter, Runyan, &
Colinders, 2000; Holden & Miller, 1999). The findings do not indicate a clear-cut advantage of interviews over questionnaires, or vice versa. However, all
the evidence indicates the desirability of clearly defining the construct of interest and then asking
about the specific behaviours that are included in
the definition, rather than posing the enquiry in

269

general or vague terms that allow major differences

in interpretation. Thus, it is preferable to ask if the
child has been touched on her private parts rather
than been molested; or kicked or hit with an
implement such as a strap rather than assaulted or
abused. Equally it is better to use multiple questions to cover a range of experiences rather than seek
to cover all through some general enquiry or summary term or phrase. It is also desirable to check,
through appropriate statistical techniques, which
set of items best test the construct in question (e.g.,
McDonald, 1999).
A range of interview and questionnaire measures
(see OLeary, 1999; Melchert, 1998) are available to
ask in adult life about seriously adverse experiences
in childhood. These include the Childhood Trauma
Questionnaire (Bernstein & Fink, 1998); the Conflict
Tactics Scale (Straus, 1990; Straus, Hamby, BoneyMcCoy, & Sugarman, 1996; Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998); the index of spouse
abuse (Hudson & McIntosh, 1981); the partner
violence screen (Feldhaus et al., 1997); the composite abuse scale (Hegarty & Sheehan, 1999); the parental bonding instrument (Parker, 1979); the Egna
Minnen Betraffande Uppfostran (Perris et al., 1980);
the childs report of parental bonding (Schaefer,
1965); and the Childhood Experiences of Care and
Abuse interview (Bifulco et al., 1994). On the whole,
the internal consistency and reliability of the scales
have been satisfactory. However, the scales to assess
emotional and physical neglect have not worked as
well as those to evaluate major conflict or abuse
(Straus et al., 1998). Where available, the findings
on validity have been considered above.

Discussion
It is all too clear that there are major methodological
problems involved in the assessment of the validity
of retrospective recall of seriously adverse experiences in childhood. On the face of it, the best method
would seem to be the comparison of contemporaneous and retrospective accounts as obtained in epidemiological/longitudinal studies of non-clinical
populations. The main problem is that the contemporaneous accounts usually involve a different
informant (generally the parent) from that used at
follow-up (generally the subjects themselves), and
that the accounts in childhood do not always cover
the complete age period. The follow-up into adult life
of groups whose abuse or neglect or family conflict
has been documented by the courts or by clinic
attendance has the additional serious limitation that
only a minority of cases of serious adversity get
documented in this way. Accordingly, retrospective
reports of abuse/neglect by individuals in non-clinical, non-court control groups are more likely to be
valid accounts of non-referred adversity than false
positives. Also, it cannot be assumed that the retro-

270

Jochen Hardt and Michael Rutter

spective recall of abuse/neglect that led to court

appearance, or removal from home, or clinic treatment will be the same as that which did not have any
of these results.
Corroboration by other family members (usually
sibs) is probably even less satisfactory because corroboration seems to be determined in large part by
whether or not the other informant recalled having
the same abusive/neglectful experience. Moreover, it
cannot be assumed that the two accounts are independent because discussions of the experiences are
likely to have taken place in the family during both
childhood and adult life.
In that connection, it is evident that retrospective
reports need not necessarily be dependent on the
individual having personal memories of the specific
events. Thus, people are likely to be able to provide
accurate reports of parental death or divorce even if
these events happened when they were infants. The
same may apply to the experience of early abuse or
neglect, but the retrospective reports will be reliant
on what other people have told the person, so introducing an additional source of both error and bias.
Given these methodological limitations, conclusions as to the validity of the retrospective recall of
serious childhood adversities must be rather cautious. Nevertheless, provided attention is confined to
serious adversities that are open to operationalisation, and provided high quality measurement methods are used, it is clear that the blanket rejection of
retrospective recall is unwarranted. The available
evidence on abuse and neglect indicates that when
abuse or neglect is retrospectively reported to have
taken place, these positive reports are likely to be
correct. The main concern over validity stems from
the universal finding that, even with well-documented serious abuse or neglect, about a third of individuals do not report its occurrence when specifically
asked about it in adult life. Accordingly, it is clear
that retrospective reports are likely to provide
underestimates of the incidence of abuse/neglect.
It is tempting to conclude that this could be dealt
with satisfactorily by some correction factor, such as
multiplying the rate by 1.5. However, this would not
be justified in view of the suggestion from some
studies that retrospective reports of abuse to some
extent produce biased associations with psychopathology, and that individuals who are well functioning in adult life may be more likely to forget (or
fail to report) early adversities, compared with those
suffering social impairment. The evidence is not
strong but, if the finding proves to be correct, it is
evident that it would introduce a source of bias into
case-control studies relying on retrospective recall
(leading to greater between-group differences in adverse early experiences than were actually the case).
The bias, if it exists, does not seem to stem from the
effects of the mood state in adult life as such. Rather,
it is probable that it arises from the extent to which
the rehearsal of memories of adverse experiences

fixes them in peoples minds and from the extent to

which memories are influenced by cognitive processes operating subsequent to the experiences. The
underlying mechanisms and their consequences
require further study and it is unfortunate that so
much of the research to date has mainly focused
on the overall accuracy/inaccuracy of memories
instead of the factors that foster or impede recall of
adverse experiences.
The conclusion that retrospective reports of serious abuse/neglect/conflict are sufficiently valid to
be usable has to be accompanied by the crucial
qualifier that this encouraging conclusion applies
only to those open to reasonable operationalisation.
The recall of experiences that rely heavily on judgement and interpretation have not been found to have
satisfactory validity. Equally, insofar as the matter
has been examined, the details (as distinct from the
occurrence) of even seriously adverse experiences
have not been found to have acceptable validity.
There has been very little examination of the accuracy of recall of the timing and sequencing of adverse
experiences but such evidence as there is suggests
that it cannot be expected to be very accurate.
In conclusion, the retrospective recall in adult life
of serious, readily operationalised, adverse experiences in childhood can be made to be sufficiently
valid (in spite of substantial measurement error) to
warrant its use in case-control studies even though
there is significant under-reporting and probably
some bias. However, the retrospective recall of more
subtle aspects of family life and relationships is
much less satisfactory.

Correspondence to
r PsyDr Jochen Hardt, Klinik und Poliklinik fu
chosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie, Universitatsklinikum Mainz, Untere Zahlbacherstr. 8,
D-55131 Mainz, Germany; Email: hardt@mail.
uni-mainz.de

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Manuscript accepted 18 February 2003