Statistical challenges in studying complex and changing families.

AIDS Behav

Department of Family and Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77098, USA.

Published: February 2012

This paper describes challenges of studying complex and changing families and provides suggestions for methods of analyses to study these family systems. Five common problems that NIMH-funded investigators have encountered in analyzing family based studies are addressed and analytic solutions for addressing these problems are illustrated using data from Family HIV/AIDS projects. The problems discussed in the paper are (1) differences in subgroup responses to interventions; (2) longitudinal changes in family relationships and covariates that vary by group in nested designs; (3) dealing with missing data over time from attrition and planned missing data due to death; (4) dealing with multiple reports from different family members; and (5) developing concordance measures among family members. The use of multi-level and growth curve modeling techniques to address these problems is illustrated with some of the studies.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10461-011-9881-6DOI Listing

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