Evaluating Maltreatment Effects on Adolescent Well-being Using Advanced Modeling

描述(由申请人提供)：该NRSA的长期目标是1)在儿童发展研究方面发展实质性的专门知识，以补充现有的方法技能和正在进行的方法培训，以及2)应用先进的分析技术来研究虐待对青少年社会和心理发展的影响。实现这些目标的培训顺序包括：1)参加每周一次的发展研讨会，并与儿童发展领域的学者结成联盟；2)由儿童发展、虐待儿童和量化方法领域的专家组成的咨询小组进行学术和专业监督；3)参加小型的多机构和多学科虐待问题研究小组；4)指导儿童发展和儿童发展领域的方法技术；以及5)儿童健康和发展方面的课程。为了配合和促进这些培训目标，培训期间开展的具体研究项目由三个有重点的具体目标组成。目标1是在美国儿童保护服务机构(CPS)的青少年样本中，使用具有各种虐待指标的连续和离散潜变量模型来建立虐待(虐待、忽视)的测量模型。目标2是评估目标1中衡量的虐待儿童对青少年在焦虑、抑郁、退缩、犯罪和攻击性以及社交、思维和注意力障碍等领域的幸福轨迹的影响。本评估中使用的模型将在发展-生态理论框架内提出。目的3是调查参加家庭以外的正式和非正式社会组织是否会缓和虐待对儿童发展的影响。家庭外社会组织的参与被认为是有保护作用的。这项研究的主要贡献将是使用带有潜在变量的结构方程模型从调查数据中传播更高质量的虐待儿童措施。随机测量误差和在某些情况下的响应偏差将在测量模型中考虑在内。此外，关系模型将是整体的，因为它们将涉及多个背景并随着时间的推移而变化，将使用最新的复杂样本分析方法来获得一致的人口估计。这项研究涉及NICHD的社会和情感发展；儿童虐待和暴力方案领域。使用复杂样本对人口进行高级建模和推断适用于所有寻求对人口参数进行无偏测量的公共卫生研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objectives ofthis NRSA are 1) to develop substantive expertise in the study of child development to complement existing methodological skills and ongoing methods training, and 2) to apply advanced analytic techniques to study the effects of maltreatment on adolescent social and psychological development. The training sequence for meeting these objectives includes: 1) participation in a weekly developmental seminar and consortium with scholars in the field of child development, 2) academic and professional supervision by an advisory panel of experts in the fields of child development, child maltreatment, and quantitative methods, 3) participation in small multi-institution and multi-disciplinary maltreatment research groups, 4) mentorship in child development and methodological techniques particular to the field of child development, and 5) coursework in child health and development. In conjunction with and to facilitate these training objectives, the specific research project undertaken during this training is made up of three focused specific aims. Aim 1 is to develop measurement models of maltreatment (abuse, neglect) using continuous and discrete latent variable models with a variety of maltreatment indicators in a population based sample of adolescents engaged with US child protective services (CPS). Aim 2 is to assess the effects of child maltreatment as measured in Aim 1 on the trajectories of youth well-being in the domains of anxiety; depression; withdrawal; delinquency and aggression; and, social, thought, and attention disorder. Models used in this assessment will be advanced within a developmental-ecological theoretical framework. Aim 3 is to investigate whether participation in formal and informal social organizations outside of the family moderates the effects of maltreatment on child development. Participation in extra-familial social organizations is hypothesized to be protective. A primary contribution ofthis research will be to disseminate higher quality measures of child maltreatment from survey data using structural equation modeling with latent variables. Random measurement error and in some cases, response bias, will be accounted for in measurement models. In addition, models of relationships will be holistic in that they will involve multiple contexts and change over time, the most recent methods for the analysis of complex samples will be used to obtain consistent population estimates. This research addresses the social and affective development; child maltreatment and violence program area ofthe NICHD. The advanced modeling and inference to populations using complex samples is applicable to all public health research that seeks unbiased measurement of population parameters.