A Latent Variable Approach to Measuring Social Dynamics in Adolescence

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 a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of research on adolescence 2020-01, Vol.30 (S1), p.238-254
Main Authors: Cole, Veronica T., Hussong, Andrea M., Faris, Robert W., Rothenberg, William A., Gottfredson, Nisha C., Ennett, Susan T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior - psychology
Adolescents
Deviance
Female
Flexibility
Health behavior
Health Risk Behaviors
Health risks
Humans
Indexes
Male
Measurement
Measurement errors
Risk Assessment - methods
Risk behavior
Secondary schools
Smoking
Smoking - psychology
Social dynamics
Social integration
Social status
Social systems
Sociometric Techniques
Sociometry
Structural equation modeling
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1050-8392
1532-7795
DOI:10.1111/jora.12466