Upset among youth in response to questions about exposure to violence, sexual assault and family maltreatment

To assess whether youth are upset by being asked questions about sensitive kinds of abuse, victimization, family maltreatment, and sexual victimization in the course of standard epidemiological surveys. A national sample of youth aged 10–17 were interviewed on the telephone by experienced interviewers as part of the National Survey of Children Exposed to Violence. At the end they were asked whether answering questions had upset them. Of the youth interviewed, 4.5% reported being at all upset and 0.8% reported being pretty or a lot upset. However, only a minority of those upset, .3% of the total sample, said they would not participate again had they known about the content. But even in this group, the regret about participation was mostly due to the length of the survey, not the types of questions being asked. Thus, asking about exposure to abuse and sensitive kinds of victimization in standard interview surveys is associated with low levels of respondent upset due to the nature of the questions.