RANDOM COEFFICIENT MODELS OF FAMILY SUBSTANCE USE

描述：(申请人摘要) 拟议的小额赠款项目的目的是审查等级制度 物质使用性质，考虑到家庭数据的相互依存性， 使用现有的数据库和复杂的分析技术。家庭 将讨论水平和个人水平的研究问题。模型 将具体说明父母和青少年(兄弟姐妹和 目标青少年)对吸毒模式和越轨行为的影响。这个 家庭层面的变量和其他背景特征对 家庭物质使用和越轨行为也将被研究。典型 对家庭数据的分析忽略了潜在的相互依赖和 数据的层次性。在这份提案中，新的分析 将采用适合于分层数据结构的技术。这些 被标记为分层或多级模型的技术考虑到 相关观测和来自不同种群的观测 分层数据集合中经常出现的不同参数值。 为了获得优秀的数据，已经花费了大量的时间和金钱 与物质使用的非随机聚类检查相关的集合， 但这些数据集中的许多还没有使用最先进的技术进行分析 专门为分层数据设计的分析技术。这个 要检查的数据的分层性质将允许我们构建， 评估和测试各种与物质使用有关的复杂模型，请访问 无论是家庭层面还是个人层面。对重大理论的检验 使用不同分析技术的关系，以及 跨数据集的发现可能会产生有关以下方面的重要信息 青少年使用药物和其他相关问题行为可能 否则，请不要在这些数据集中进行探索。多层次考试 可能会进一步加深我们对这一角色的理解 家庭和更大的社会背景，在物质的发展中 使用和相关的越轨行为。

DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) The aim of the proposed small grant project is to examine the hierarchical nature of substance use, accounting for the interdependence of family data, using existing databases and sophisticated analytic techniques. Family level and individual level research questions will be addressed. Models will specify the interdependence of parents and adolescents (siblings and target adolescents) on patterns of drug use and deviant behaviors. The impact of family level variables and other contextual characteristics, on family substance use and deviant behavior will also be studied. Typical analyses of family data ignore the potential interdependence and hierarchical nature of the data. In this proposal, new analytical techniques suited to a hierarchical data structure will be employed. These techniques, labeled hierarchical or multilevel models, take into account correlated observations and observations from heterogeneous populations with varying parameter values that often arise in hierarchical data collections. A great deal of time and money has been expended to obtain excellent data sets relevant to an examination of non random clustering of substance use, but many of these data sets have not been analyzed using stage-of-the-art analytic techniques specifically designed for hierarchical data. The hierarchical nature of the data to be examined will allow us to construct, estimate, and test a variety of complex models concerning substance use at both the family and individual level. Tests of major theoretical relationships using different analytic techniques, and comparisons of findings across datasets is likely to yield important information regarding adolescent substance use and other related problem behaviors that might otherwise go unexplored in these datasets. Examination at multiple levels of the hierarchy is likely to further enhance our understanding of the role of families, and the larger social context, in the development of substance use and related deviant behaviors.