The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) quiz asks a series of ten questions about common childhood traumatic experiences. The questionnaire serves as an indicator of how likely a person is to experience obstacles later in life.
The quiz is an effective tool for increasing awareness about the dangers of ACEs. However, it’s critical to keep in mind that there are some factors of developmental uncertainty that the quiz doesn’t take into account. For starters, the exam doesn’t factor in the issues the Philadelphia study raised, like community violence or even housing insecurity and natural disasters.
However, while the test doesn’t cover the breadth of potentially stressful experiences, a child may face, it is a good benchmark to measure one’s own experiences by.
The higher your test results, the more severe your trauma likely was. While a low score doesn’t mean you won’t suffer long-term effects based on the trauma, a higher score is more likely to present with severe wellbeing impairments later in life.
That being said, there are some considerations we need to make about the test and the fact that there are some important factors missing from it.