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Exploring Family Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Problem Behaviors in the Caribbean

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Abstract

This paper develops measures of family risk and protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors and tests the effects of these measures on three health risk behaviors in a Caribbean nation: illegal gun ownership, gang membership, and drug use. Data are drawn from a sample of 2,376 adolescents in Trinidad and Tobago, a developing nation in the eastern Caribbean. Descriptive statistics are reported, as well as findings from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models. Existing measures of family risk and protective factors have weak construct and concurrent validity when applied to a sample of youth from Trinidad and Tobago. The revised measures developed in this study have stronger construct validity and some of them have a significant influence on one or more health risk behaviors. From a methodological perspective, the findings are useful for thinking about the validity of existing measures of family risk and protective factors, especially for use in settings distant from where they were developed. From a substantive perspective, the findings outline the family correlates of three health risk behaviors known to exert a strong influence on morbidity and mortality among adolescents.

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Notes

  1. The original CTC model contained 38 survey questions addressing family risk and protective factors, but three of those items were not used in the TTYS.

  2. Unlike many of the well-known statistical packages, Mplus provides numerous options for estimating measurement models with categorical outcomes [27, 29].

  3. The goodness of fit measures presented here are the ones most commonly used when evaluating models with categorical observed variables [27, 29]. The measures include Chi-square (χ2) together with its associated degrees of freedom (df) and p value; the comparative fit index (CFI); the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI); the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA); and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). In later models, the SRMR is replaced with the weighted root mean square residual (WRMR) because it is known to work well in confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models with categorical outcomes.

  4. Loadings greater than 0.3 were considered meaningful if there were no cross-loadings (items that loaded at more than half the value of the primary loading). Meaningful loadings and cross-loadings are shown in bold in Table 2.

  5. For ease of interpretation, the signs of factor 1 (poor family management) were reversed in Tables 3 and 4 because the items comprising the factor are reverse coded. A higher score on these items (as originally coded) is intended to reflect better family management.

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Acknowledgments

Financial and logistical support for this research was provided by the Ministry of National Security and the Ministry of Education of Trinidad and Tobago. The points of view expressed in this paper are those of the author alone.

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  1. Department of Justice, Law and Society, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8043, USA

    Edward R. Maguire

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Maguire, E.R. Exploring Family Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Problem Behaviors in the Caribbean. Matern Child Health J 17, 1488–1498 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-012-1156-y

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