Assessing the predictive utility of Florida’s human trafficking screening tool among dual system-involved youth

Stacey Cutbush Starseed, Stephen Tueller, Marianne Kluckman, Lilly Yu, Sam Scaggs and John Haggerty

Children and Youth Services Review, 2025, vol. 171, issue C

Abstract: The fourteen-item Human Trafficking Screening Tool was developed by the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF) and Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to identify trafficking victimization among DJJ involved youth, a setting and population that lacked a validated sex and labor trafficking screening tool prior to this study (Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, 2021). The predictive validity of the HTST was assessed for two outcomes: [1] DJJ designation of likely experienced trafficking, and [2] a verified outcome of a DCF investigation for human trafficking. Analyses were replicated in two populations, a sample of all DJJ youth screened with the HTST, and the subset of youth referred to DCF among whom 23.8% had verified trafficking allegations. Logistic regression results show the HTST has good to excellent predictive validity for the full sample and attenuated predictive validity in the subsample, as would be expected due to the restriction in range for higher risk youth referred to DCF. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results indicate good internal reliability and three factors: sex trafficking risk; labor trafficking risk; environmental risk. Overall, results indicate the HTST can be adopted in other JJ populations, and EFA results suggest that an HTST short form could be developed to reduce staff and youth burden and improve predictive validity.

Keywords: Human trafficking; Sex trafficking; Labor trafficking; Screening; Identification; Validation; Child welfare; Juvenile justice; Youth; Child; Minor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074092500043X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:171:y:2025:i:c:s019074092500043x

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108160

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().