A Latent Variable Approach to Measuring Social Dynamics in Adolescence
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In the study of adolescent health, it is useful to derive indices of social dynamics from sociometric data, and to use these indices as predictors of health risk behaviors. In this manuscript, we introduce a flexible latent variable model as a novel way of obtaining estimates of social integration and social status from school-based sociometric data. Such scores provide the flexibility of a regression-based approach while accounting for measurement error in sociometric indicators. We demonstrate the utility of these factor scores in testing complex hypotheses through a combination of structural equation modeling and survival models, showing that deviance mediates the relationship between social status and smoking onset hazard at the transition to high school.
DOI: 10.1111/jora.12466
Language: English
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: The Impact of Affect Regulatory Mechanisms and Binge Eating on Drug Recovery, Mixture Modeling of Patterns of Substance Use: Taking into Account Measurement Bias, Peer Mechanisms in the Internalizing Pathway to Substance Use, G3292385651, THE CONTEXT OF ADOLESCENT SUBSTANCE USE, Human Development: Interdisciplinary Research Training, Internalizing pathways to drug use: A multi-sample analysis
OpenAlex ID: W2904240385