Citation

Zeng G, Zhen Z, Fu P. Rev. Recent Clin. Trials 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, 4Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Bentham Science Publishers)

DOI

10.2174/1574887114666191028115245

PMID

31746303

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Previous research has shown that internalizing and externalizing behavior problems often co-occur. But the relationship between the developmental trajectories of these two types of behavior problems is under studied. The co-occurring evolutions of developmental trajectories of two behaviors has two components: 1) the correlation between the slopes of two behavior profiles (termed the association of the evolutions); and 2) the marginal correlation of two development trajectory profiles, which is the development of correlation between internalizing and externalizing behavior over time (termed the evolution of the association).The association of the evolutions and the evolution of the association have not been not fully explored in the context of the development of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems among kindergarteners in the United States.

METHODS: The random-effects approach for joint modeling of multivariate longitudinal profiles, was used to evaluate the co-development and its temporal pattern of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on a nationally representative sample of 9791 kindergarteners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K).

RESULTS: There was a moderate positive association between the evolutions of the two behavior problems with correlation coefficient of 0.319. The evolution of association between the two behaviors was increasing over time with correlation coefficient from 0.195 at the Fall of kindergarten to 0.291 by the time of fifth grade in general. Race and age groups act differently on the evolution of association. The associations were getting stronger for Asian group and older groups than their peer groups.

CONCLUSION: This investigation of the association of evolutions and the evolution of association between the internalizing and externalizing behaviors shows that the two problem behaviors reciprocally reinforce each other and lead to increases in the other in a moderate strength and the strength is increasing over time.

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Language: en

Keywords

Externalizing problems; Internalizing problems; Kindergarteners; evolution of association; joint modeling of bivariate longitudinal data