Equivalence of family functioning and externalizing behaviors in adolescent substance users of different race/ethnicity

Abstract

Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) for Adolescent Drug Abuse clinical trial of 480 adolescents boys and girls age 12 to 17 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 than either Hispanic or White nonHispanic 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. Keywords Measurement Invariance; Ethnic Minorities; Racial/Ethnic Variability; Adolescent problem behaviorsThe most recent data from the US Bureau of the Census (2000Census ( , 2004 indicates that racial/ ethnic minorities are projected to account for one third of the US population as soon as 2010. The adolescent population is even more diverse, with 36% of 10-19 years-old coming from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to 28% of the general population (US Census Bureau, 2000).Understanding racial/ethnic variation in important adolescent outcomes such as substance use has historically been overlooked. For example, Hall and Maramba (2001) report that © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Address correspondence to Daniel J. Feaster, Ph.D., Center for Family Studies, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, 1425 NW 10 th Avenue, Miami, Florida 33136; dfeaster@med.miami.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Subst Abuse Treat. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 June 1. Published in final edited form as:J Subst Abuse Treat. 2010 June ; 38S1: S113-S124. doi:10.1016/j.jsat.2010.01.010. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript "Publications involving cross-cultural issues represented 1% and racial/ethnic minority issues represented 3% of all the publications in the English language in the PyscINFO datab...

Measurement Invariance of the Short Inventory of Problems-Revised across African-American and Non-Latino White Substance Users

“…This study contributes to the growing literature on how substance abuse treatment researchers can ensure unbiased assessment when studying treatment outcomes across racial/ethnic minority groups (e.g., Burlew et al, 2009; Feaster et al, 2010; Field et al, 2009). Since MI and MET (Miller & Rollnick, 2002; Miller, Zweben, DiClemente, & Rychtarik, 1992) techniques have become standard social work practice in substance-abuse treatment settings (Ondersma, Winhusen, Erickson, Stine, & Wang, 2009), the SIP-R is expected to continue to be one of the most prominent outcome measures in social work practice involving motivational techniques.…”

“…The residual variances of the two items were largest in African American participants’ reports. The larger the variance exhibited by an item, the smaller the standardized loading and subsequent reliability of the factor the item represents (Feaster et al, 2010). Thus, strict metric nonequivalence suggests that African American participants’ report of these two indicators are less reliable in comparison to non-Latino White participants.…”

“…Therefore, a unit increase in one group implies an equal change in the underlying factor for the other group. (Feaster et al, 2010). Methodologists have noted that weak metric invariance is not sufficient to make comparisons of levels of the factor across groups because it does not indicate that the zero point on the scales are the same across groups (Chen, Sousa, & West, 2005; Feaster et al, 2010).…”

“…Strong or scalar invariance indicates that the intercepts of the regression equations for each item on its intended factor is invariant across groups. Since the item intercept is the mean value of an item when the latent factor is equal to zero, when item intercepts are equal then the zero point on the underlying factor is the same across groups (Feaster et al, 2010). If the item intercepts differ across groups, it suggests there are different normative levels of the item across groups.…”

“…Conclusions drawn from invalid findings can lead to ineffective treatments and policy initiatives targeting substance use disorders (Ramirez, Ford, Steward, & Teresi, 2005). Burlew et al (2009) and Feaster et al (2010) emphasized that any analysis of comparative effectiveness of substance abuse treatments across racial and ethnic groups should first ensure that measures used to assess treatment effectiveness have the same conceptual meaning or measurement invariance across groups. Thus, the current secondary analysis study aims to determine measurement invariance properties of a widely-used clinical assessment of the negative consequences of substance use (the Short Inventory of Problems–Revised or SIP-R; Kiluk, Dreifuss, Weiss, Morgenstern, & Carroll, 2012) across African American and non-Latino White participants in a randomized clinical trial in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (NIDA-CTN).…”