We have collected retrospective data on different forms of childhood abuse adult patients, as well as current physical and mental impairment.
The questionnaire on childhood abuse included a time-frame for each question allowing patients to state at which age the abuse took place; the time-frame included 18 boxes for the first 18 years of their life. This way we know for example that a patient got physically abused at the age of 6, 7 and 8 years, and then again at the age of 16 and 18 years.
Our main research question at the moment is, whether the type of abuse or the timing (i.e. at which age the abuse took place) is a better predictor for adult mental and physical health.
We have entered the time frames for each question as 18 dichotomous variables (yes vs. no) for each patients.
The dependent variables (mental and physical health) are coded as nominal (disease present: yes vs. no), as well as metric (e.g. depressive symptoms) variables.
Can anyone recommend a good statistical procedure to approach our question with this kind of data?
Thank you all for your input!!