Drug Use & Latent Structure of Adolescent Mental Health

通过交叉分类来探索可能的男性-女性和儿童-青少年差异， 最近发表的关于年轻人的精神和行为障碍的证据似乎证实了焦虑和抑郁的维度模型（沃兹沃斯等人，2001）以及注意力问题（Hudziak等人，1999年）。在这个新的R 01项目中，主要目标是调查青少年药物使用，因为它与青少年（12- 13岁，14 - 15岁，16 -17岁）各年龄层的精神和行为障碍的潜在结构有关，并适当考虑不同的药物类型（吸入剂;摇头丸等俱乐部药物;大麻;烟草;酒精）和药物参与程度。一旦阐明了底层潜在类结构，并且基于最受支持的类结构分配了类成员资格， 申请人将转向回归模型以探索与以下相关的研究问题：（a）青少年药物参与和精神生活、行为和社会适应障碍的共同发生，（B）探索由种族-民族定义的亚组之间潜在结构的变化以或许有助于理解影响少数亚组的健康差异，以及（c）在美国居住的当地区域内的类成员的聚类，特别侧重于将探索药物使用如何维持犯罪同龄人群体的分析。这些数据来自13，831名青少年（12-17岁），他们是在全国药物滥用家庭调查（NHSDA）中进行全国代表性抽样后招募的。 1994-1996.对于NHSDA，青少年完成了毒品参与的标准化模块，以及Achenbach的青年自我报告（YSR）的调查适应。YSR可能是最多的。广泛用于测量青少年在精神生活、行为和社会适应方面的障碍。总之，研究计划是一个利用未开发的研究机会，了解更多关于青少年吸毒，因为它涉及到精神生活，行为和社会适应的干扰。该计划涉及使用两个相对较新的生物统计学发展，即潜在类回归和交替逻辑回归模型，这是研究问题的创新方法， 以前在全国范围的大样本流行病学研究中没有被问到。

With cross-classification used to probe for possible male-female and child-adolescent variation, recently published evidence on the mental and behavioral disturbances of young people seems to confirm dimensional models of anxiety and depression (Wadsworth et al., 2001) as well as attention problems (Hudziak et al., 1999). In this new R01 project, the main goal is to investigate youth drug use as it relates to latent structure of mental and behavioral disturbances across age strata in adolescence (12-13,14-15,16-17 years), with due consideration for different drug types (inhalants; club drugs like ecstasy; marijuana; tobacco; alcohol) and levels of drug involvement. Once the underlying latent class structures have been elucidated, and class memberships have been assigned based on the best-supported class structures, the applicant will turn to regression models to probe research questions pertinent to (a) the co-occurrence of adolescent drug involvement and disturbances of the mental life, behavior, and social adaptation, (b) probing for variation in the latent structure across subgroups defined by race-ethnicity to perhaps aid in understanding health disparities that affect minority subgroups, and (c) the clustering of the class members within local areas of residence within the United States, with a specific focus upon analyses that will probe how drug use might sustain delinquent peer groups. The data are from 13,831 youths (age 12-17) recruited after nationally representative sampling for the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) in 1994-1996. For the NHSDA, the youths completed standardized modules on drug involvement, as well as a survey adaptation of Achenbach's Youth Self Report (YSR). The YSR is perhaps, the most. widely used instrument for measuring youth disturbances in the mental life, behavior, and socxal adaptation. In sum, the plan of research is one that exploits an untapped research opportunity to learn more about adolescent drug taking as it relates to disturbances of the mental life, behavior, and social adaptation. The plan involves the use of two relatively recent biostatistical developments in the form of latent class regression and alternating logistic regression models, which are innovative approaches to the study of research questions that previously have not been asked in large-sample epidemiological studies of national scope.