Innovative Modeling of Puberty and Substance Use Risk

描述(由申请人提供)：青春期过渡是发展精神病理学的最关键的时期之一，由于在此期间发生了广泛和同时的荷尔蒙、身体和社会角色的变化，因此有可能在以后使用药物。目前的发育理论表明，在青春期过渡期间，激素浓度对危险行为具有直接的神经化学效应和间接的心理社会效应。评估这些直接和间接影响将为为儿童和青少年制定有效的早期药物使用预防或干预方法提供关键知识。然而，由于(A)青春期特征的测量误差和(B)缺乏区分直接和间接影响的适当统计方法，这种知识是缺乏的。为了回应PA-03-044，“使用现有数据集的精神病理学的风险因素”，我们建议使用来自NIH资助的研究(5R01MH058393-03)的特殊数据集来评估激素浓度对青春期过渡期物质使用风险的直接和间接影响。我们的新的分析方法是两种先进统计技术的综合和扩展，以便既校正青春期的测量误差，又基于统计因果推理来评估直接和间接影响。我们的目标是：(1)使用现有的和新的方法评估青春期过渡期间激素浓度对物质使用风险的直接和间接影响，并比较两者的结果。(2)开发一种更准确、更丰富的方法和计算工具，用于青春期成熟过程的建模和测量误差的贝叶斯校正。(3)扩展我们的广义中介模型，在考虑潜在中介变量和/或潜在结果变量的情况下评估直接和间接中介效应。拟议的工作在物质使用和统计应用领域都是创新的。这项研究有望通过研究青春期过渡期间物质使用和滥用风险以及荷尔蒙上升之间的途径来填补青少年早期发育物质使用方面的知识空白。它还将有助于统计文献建模纵向青春期成熟过程和复杂的中介机制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The pubertal transition represents one of the most critical periods for the development of psychopathology and risk for later substance use due to extensive and simultaneous hormonal, physical, and social-role changes occurring during this period. Current developmental theories suggest that hormone concentrations have a direct neurochemical effect and indirect psychosocial effect on risk behavior during the pubertal transition. Assessing these direct and indirect effects will provide critical knowledge for constructing effective early substance use prevention or intervention approaches for children and adolescents. However, such knowledge is lacking due to (a) measurement error in characterization of puberty and (b) lack of adequate statistical methodology to differentiate direct and indirect effects. In response to the PA-03-044, "Risk Factors of Psychopathology Using Existing Data Sets", we propose to assess the direct and indirect effects of hormone concentrations on substance use risk during the pubertal transitional period using an exceptional dataset from an NIH-funded study (5R01MH058393-03). Our novel analytical approach is a synthesis and extension of two advanced statistical techniques in order to both correct for the measurement error in puberty and to assess the direct and indirect effects based on statistical causal inference. Our aims are: (1) To assess direct and indirect effects of hormone concentrations on substance use risk during the pubertal transition using existing and new methods and to compare the results from both. (2) To develop a more accurate and informative method and a computational tool for modeling the pubertal maturation process and correcting for measurement error via a Bayesian approach. (3) To extend our generalized mediational model for assessing direct and indirect mediational effects considering latent mediator and/or latent outcome variables. The proposed work is innovative both in the field of substance use and statistical application. The study is expected to fill the gap of knowledge in early adolescent developmental substance use by examining pathways between substance use and abuse risk and the rise of hormones during the pubertal transition. It will also contribute to the statistical literature on modeling longitudinal pubertal maturational process and complex mediating mechanisms.