From the Department of Psychology (Holochwost), Lehman College, The City University of New York, Bronx, New York; Department of Psychology (Volpe, Collins), North Carolina State University, Raleigh; School of Nursing (Propper) and School of Education (Mills-Koonce), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Department of Psychology (Brown), West Chester University, West Chester; and Department of Psychology (Jaffee), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Psychosom Med. 2024 Apr 1;86(3):169-180. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000001292. Epub 2024 Feb 19.
Allostatic load represents the cumulative toll of chronic mobilization of the body's stress response systems, as indexed by biomarkers. Higher levels of stress and disadvantage predict higher levels of allostatic load, which, in turn, predict poorer physical and mental health outcomes. To maximize the efficacy of prevention efforts, screening for stress- and disadvantage-associated health conditions must occur before middle age-that is, during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. However, this requires that models of allostatic load display properties of measurement invariance across age groups. Because most research on allostatic load has featured older adults, it is unclear if these requirements can be met.
To address this question, we fit a series of exploratory and confirmatory analytic models to data on eight biomarkers using a nationally representative sample of N = 4260 children, adolescents, and young adults drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset.
Exploratory and confirmatory models indicated that, consistent with allostatic load theory, a unidimensional model was a good fit to the data. However, this model did not display properties of measurement invariance; post-hoc analyses suggested that the biomarkers included in the final confirmatory model were most strongly intercorrelated among young adults and most weakly intercorrelated among adolescents.
These results underscore the importance of testing assumptions about measurement invariance in allostatic load before drawing substantive conclusions about stress, disadvantage, and health by directly comparing levels of allostatic load across different stages of development, while underscoring the need to expand investigations of measurement invariance to samples of longitudinal data.
全身适应负荷代表了身体应激反应系统的慢性动员对机体造成的累积损耗，其可以通过生物标志物来评估。更高水平的压力和劣势会预测更高水平的全身适应负荷，而后者又会预测更差的身心健康结果。为了最大限度地提高预防措施的效果，必须在中年之前（即儿童期、青春期和成年早期）筛查与压力和劣势相关的健康状况。然而，这需要全身适应负荷模型在各年龄组具有测量不变性的特性。由于大多数全身适应负荷的研究都集中在老年人身上，因此尚不清楚是否可以满足这些要求。
为了解决这个问题，我们使用来自国家健康和营养检查调查数据集的 4260 名儿童、青少年和年轻人的全国代表性样本，对八项生物标志物的数据拟合了一系列探索性和验证性分析模型。
探索性和验证性模型表明，与全身适应负荷理论一致，单维模型与数据拟合良好。然而，该模型不具有测量不变性的特性；事后分析表明，最终验证性模型中包含的生物标志物在年轻人中相关性最强，在青少年中相关性最弱。
这些结果强调了在通过直接比较不同发育阶段的全身适应负荷水平来得出关于压力、劣势和健康的实质性结论之前，测试全身适应负荷中关于测量不变性的假设的重要性，同时也强调了需要将测量不变性的研究扩展到纵向数据样本。
