Innovative Modeling of Puberty and Substance Use Risk

青春期过渡是精神病理学发展最关键的时期之一。 以及由于广泛和同时的荷尔蒙、身体和社会角色而导致的以后使用药物的风险 在此期间发生的变化。目前的发育理论表明，激素浓度 对青春期的危险行为有直接的神经化学效应和间接的心理社会效应 过渡。评估这些直接和间接影响将为构建有效的 儿童和青少年的早期药物使用预防或干预方法。然而，这样的 由于(A)青春期特征的测量错误和(B)缺乏足够的 区分直接影响和间接影响的统计方法。对PA-03-044的回应是“风险” 利用现有的数据集，我们建议评估直接和间接的影响 在青春期过渡期激素浓度与物质使用风险的关系 数据集来自NIH资助的一项研究(5R01MH058393-03)。我们的新分析方法是一种综合和 推广了两种先进的统计技术，以便同时对测量误差进行修正 并根据统计因果推断评估其直接和间接影响。我们的目标是：(1) 评估青春期激素浓度对物质使用风险的直接和间接影响 使用现有方法和新方法进行过渡，并比较两种方法的结果。(2)发展更多 用于模拟青春期成熟过程的准确和信息量大的方法和计算工具 通过贝叶斯方法校正测量误差。(3)推广我们的广义中介模型 用于评估考虑潜在调解人和/或潜在结果的直接和间接调解效果 变量。拟议的工作在物质使用和统计应用领域都是创新的。这个 研究有望通过研究来填补青少年早期发展物质使用方面的知识空白 在青春期过渡期间，物质使用和滥用风险与荷尔蒙上升之间的途径。它 还将对建立青春期纵向成熟过程模型的统计文献做出贡献 复杂的调解机制。

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 datasetfrom 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.