ACE Score Calculator

The ACE Score calculator counts how many of ten adverse-childhood-experience categories are marked yes, reproducing the 10-item questionnaire from the original CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study (Felitti et al., 1998), the foundational research linking childhood abuse and household dysfunction to leading causes of death in adulthood. Each input is interpreted as binary: a rounded value of at least 1 contributes one point, while anything lower contributes zero. The resulting ACE Score runs from 0 to 10. Emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, parental separation, violence toward a mother or stepmother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, and household incarceration all have identical weight in this count. Risk Category is a coarse code built from the total: level 1 for scores 0–1, level 2 for 2–3, and level 3 for 4 or more. The displayed Health Risk Multiplier is another fixed lookup.

It is 1 at zero, 1.5 at one, 2 at two or three, 3.5 from four through five, and 5 from six through ten. The multiplier is therefore not calculated from a personal health profile and does not increase after six. An ACE count records category exposure, not frequency, duration, severity, age, protective relationships, resilience, current safety, or present symptoms. Two people with the same total may have very different histories and needs. The engine also cannot establish that an experience caused any later condition. Because the questions can be distressing, users may choose to stop and seek support; the numerical result should never replace trauma-informed professional care.