Changes in Classes of Injury-Related Risks and Consequences of Risk-Level Drinking: a Latent Transition Analysis

Abstract

Risk-level drinking, drinking and driving, and alcohol-related violence are risk factors that result in injuries. The current study sought to identify which subgroups of patients experience the most behavioral change following a brief intervention. A secondary analysis of data from a brief alcohol intervention study was conducted. The sample (N=664) includes at-risk drinkers who experienced an injury and were admitted for care to a Level-1 trauma center. Injury-related items from the Short Inventory of Problems+6 were used to perform a latent transition analysis to describe class transitions participants experienced following discharge. Four classes emerged for the year before and after the current injury. Most individuals transitioned from higher risk classes into those with lower risk. Some participants maintained risky profiles, and others increased risks and consequences. Drinking and driving remained a persistent problem among study participants. Although a large portion of intervention recipients improved risks and consequences of alcohol use following discharge, more intensive intervention services may be needed for a subset of patients who showed little or no improvement.

Longitudinal Model Building Using Latent Transition Analysis: An Example Using School Bullying Data

“…Both LCA and LTA have been applied to problems in the social and behavioral sciences, education, and public health. Some exemplary papers can be found in social and behavioral sciences (Bergman and Magnusson, 1997 ; Todd and Houston, 2013 ; Jagenow et al, 2015 ; Sagoe et al, 2017 ), medicine and public health (Guo et al, 2009 ; Cochran et al, 2015 ; Cosden et al, 2015 ; Kenzik et al, 2015 ), and education (Goldweber et al, 2011 ; Schweizer et al, 2014 ; Williford et al, 2014 ; Ryoo et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2016 ). LCA and LTA have been often called, “person-centered analyses” because LCA and LTA use response patterns of observed variables to assign individuals to unobserved latent groups (Bye and Schechter, 1986 ; Collins and Wugalter, 1992 ; Bergman and Magnusson, 1997 ; Masyn, 2013 ).…”