Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.
J Subst Abuse Treat. 2010 Jun;38 Suppl 1:S113-24. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2010.01.010.
The Brief Strategic Family Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abuse clinical trial of 480 adolescents boys and girls aged 12 to 17 years and their parents was designed to maximize the chance that a sufficient number of Hispanic and Black adolescents would be included to allow valid subgroup comparisons. Examination of measurement invariance is an important step to ensure valid analysis. Two construct areas important to the analysis of trial results, adolescent problem behaviors, and family functioning showed a high degree of measurement invariance, which allowed valid comparisons of mean baseline differences across groups. Results showed that Black families had significantly higher initial levels of family functioning and lower levels of adolescent externalizing behaviors than either Hispanic or White non-Hispanic families. This pattern is consistent with an increased likelihood of referral of Black adolescents with more severe problems to restricted setting rather than to outpatient drug abuse treatment. This possibility highlights the importance of considering differing baseline characteristics of subgroups prior to assessing differential treatment effectiveness to prevent confounding.
青少年药物滥用的简要策略家庭治疗临床试验招募了 480 名 12 至 17 岁的青少年及其父母，旨在最大程度地增加纳入足够数量的西班牙裔和非裔美国青少年的机会，以便能够进行有效的亚组比较。检验测量不变性是确保分析有效性的重要步骤。对试验结果分析很重要的两个结构领域，青少年问题行为和家庭功能，表现出高度的测量不变性，这允许对不同组别的基线差异进行有效的均值比较。结果表明，与西班牙裔或白种非西班牙裔家庭相比，黑人家庭的家庭功能初始水平显著更高，而青少年的外化行为水平显著更低。这种模式与将黑人青少年中更严重问题的青少年转诊到限制环境而不是门诊药物滥用治疗的可能性更高的模式一致。这种可能性强调了在评估差异治疗效果以防止混淆之前，考虑亚组不同基线特征的重要性。
