The QUIC-SP: A Spanish language tool assessing unpredictability in early life is linked to physical and mental health

• Published in: PloS one 2025, Vol.20 (1), p.e0298296
• Main Authors: Liu, Sabrina R, Bailey, Natasha A, Romero-González, Sara, Moors, Amy, Campos, Belinda, Davis, Elysia Poggi, Glynn, Laura M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescence; Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult; Adverse Childhood Experiences; Anxiety; Anxiety - psychology; Bilingualism; Child; Child development; Children; English language; Female; Hedonic response; Hispanic Americans; Humans; Language; Male; Mental depression; Mental Health; Middle Aged; Polls & surveys; Populations; Psychometrics - methods; Public health; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; Spanish language; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298296

Accumulating evidence indicates that unpredictable signals in early life represent a unique form of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) associated with disrupted neurodevelopmental trajectories in children and adolescents. The Questionnaire of Unpredictability in Childhood (QUIC) was developed to assess early life unpredictability [1], encompassing social, emotional, and physical unpredictability in a child's environment, and has been validated in three independent cohorts. However, the importance of identifying ACEs in diverse populations, including non-English speaking groups, necessitates translation of the QUIC. The current study aims to translate and validate a Spanish language version of the QUIC (QUIC-SP) and assess its associations with mental and physical health. Spanish-speaking participants (N = 285) were recruited via the online market crowdsourcing platform, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and completed an online survey that included the QUIC-SP and validated Spanish language assessments of physical and mental health. The QUIC-SP demonstrated excellent psychometric properties and similar mean scores, endorsement rates, and internal reliability to the English language version, thus establishing its validity among Spanish-speaking adults. Higher QUIC-SP scores, indicating greater unpredictability in early life, predicted increased symptoms of anxiety, anhedonia, depression, and poorer physical health. Given significant racial and ethnic disparities in health, the QUIC-SP may serve as a valuable tool to address the public health consequences of ACEs among Spanish-speaking populations.