Assessments of psychopathology and service use are commonly collected using multiple informants in community or service-based mental health research. For example, in assessments of a child's mental health status, parents, teachers, children and others have served as informants on the underlying psychopathology of the child. Studies of mental health treatment and evaluations of quality of care often solicit multiple source reports, including self-report and queries of administrative databases or medical charts. Many methodological challenges regarding the analysis of multiple informant data in psychiatry remain unsolved. Beginning with work published in 1995, we have developed a general approach to the analysis of multiple source data. While these methods have proven useful in a variety of settings, additional development is needed along several lines. This application will develop methodology for the analysis of multiple informants and/or multiple assessment data collected in studies designed to measure mental health outcomes or risk factors in community and service-based samples.
In Specific Aim 1, we will develop more efficient methods for the analysis of multiple informant data used as predictors, as well as develop methods to incorporate partially observed informant reports.
In Specific Aim 2, we consider methods for the analysis of multiple source outcome data measured repeatedly in longitudinal studies.
In Specific Aim 3, we consider the use of multivariate latent variable models for the analysis of multiple source outcomes that are non-commensurate. The innovative methodology that we propose will provide an attractive framework for the analysis of multiple informant data, and allow researchers to systematically study often disparate reports on a construct (such as psychopathology or quality of services) that is inherently difficult to measure. By applying our new methodology to existing datasets that are directly applicable to several recent NIMH initiatives, we will disseminate our results to the mental health research community. In addition to publications that describe our new methodology, we will provide macros, documentation and tutorials on our existing multiple informant web page, and present short courses at mental health and services conferences. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
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