Drug Use & Latent Structure of Adolescent Mental Health

通过使用交叉分类来探索可能的男性-女性和儿童-青少年变异， 最近发表的关于年轻人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(Wadsworth等人，2001)以及注意力问题(Hudziak等人，1999)。在这个新的R01项目中，主要目标是调查青少年吸毒与青春期(12-13岁、14-15岁、16-17岁)各年龄段精神和行为障碍的潜在结构，并适当考虑不同的毒品类型(吸入剂；俱乐部毒品，如摇头丸；大麻；烟草；酒精)和涉及毒品的程度。一旦阐明了潜在的类结构，并基于最受支持的类结构分配了类成员关系， 申请者将转向回归模型，以探索与以下相关的研究问题：(A)青少年吸毒与精神生活、行为和社会适应障碍的共存；(B)探索由种族-种族定义的子群体之间潜在结构的差异，以或许有助于了解影响少数群体的健康差异；以及(C)班级成员在美国当地居住地的聚集，重点将特别放在将探索吸毒可能如何维持犯罪同龄人群体的分析上。这些数据来自13,831名12-17岁的年轻人，他们是在#年全国药物滥用家庭调查(NHSDA)的全国代表性抽样后招募的 1994-1996年。对于NHSDA，这些年轻人完成了关于毒品参与的标准化模块，以及Achenbach的青年自我报告(YSR)的调查改编。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。总而言之，研究计划是一个利用一个尚未开发的研究机会来更多地了解青少年吸毒的机会，因为它与精神生活、行为和社会适应的干扰有关。该计划涉及使用两个相对较新的生物统计学发展，形式为潜在类别回归和交替Logistic回归模型，这是研究以下研究问题的创新方法 以前没有在全国范围的大样本流行病学研究中被问及。

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.