Evaluating the Cumulative Impact of Childhood Misfortune: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach.

ABSTRACT: Most studies of the early origins of adult health rely on summing dichotomously measured negative exposures to measure childhood misfortune (CM), neglect, adversity, or trauma. There are several limitations to this approach, including that it assumes each exposure carries the same level of risk for a particular outcome. Further, it often leads researchers to dichotomize continuous measures for the sake of creating an additive variable from similar indicators. We propose an alternative approach within the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework that allows differential weighting of the negative exposures and can incorporate dichotomous and continuous observed variables as well as latent variables. Using the Health and Retirement Study data, our analyses compare the traditional approach

SUBMITTER: Mustillo S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8570259 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature