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"On a daily basis, researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences collect information and fit statistical models to the gathered empirical data with the goal of making significant advances in these fields. In many cases, it can be useful to identify latent, or unobserved, subgroups in a population, where individuals' subgroup membership is inferred from their responses on a set of observed variables. Latent Class and Latent Transition Analysis provides a comprehensive and unified introduction to this topic through one-of-a-kind, step-by-step presentations and coverage of theoretical, technical, and practical issues in categorical latent variable modeling for both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Latent Class and Latent Transition Analysis is an excellent book for courses on categorical data analysis and latent variable models at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in the social, behavioral, and health sciences who conduct latent class and latent transition analysis in their everyday work"--Provided by publisher

A progressive and hierarchical sequence of drug use suggests that a sequence of stages of drug use can describe the order by which adolescents try drugs. We propose an operational definition to test gateway relations by providing a framework with the aim of describing a set of conditions to guide the evaluation of whether a drug serves as a gateway for another drug. We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to demonstrate how using latent transition analysis we can estimate the odds of using a drug at a later time conditional on having used a gateway drug at an earlier time. We provide three empirical demonstrations for testing the gateway relations using a national and longitudinal data of adolescents (e.g., gateway relation between cigarettes and marijuana, alcohol and marijuana, and alcohol and cigarettes).

Supportive relationships with parents and friends reduce adolescent risk for depression; however, whether and how the strength of these associations changes across adolescence remains less clear. Age‐varying associations of mother–adolescent and father–adolescent closeness and friend support with depressive symptoms were examined across ages 12.5–19.5 using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 4,819). Positive relationships with mothers, fathers, and friends were associated with lower depressive symptoms across adolescence, and the associations were generally stable across age. The association between father–adolescent closeness and depressive symptoms was stronger for girls than for boys during mid‐adolescence. Mother–adolescent closeness was more strongly negatively associated with depressive symptoms in the context of higher friend support during mid‐adolescence.

We apply latent transition analysis (LTA) to characterize transitions over time in substance use behavior profiles among first-year college students. Advantages of modeling substance use behavior as a categorical latent variable are demonstrated. Alcohol use (any drinking and binge drinking), cigarette use, and marijuana use were assessed in a sample (N=718) of college students during the fall and spring semesters. Four profiles of 14-day substance use behavior were identified: (1) Non-Users; (2) Cigarette Smokers; (3) Binge Drinkers; and (4) Bingers with Marijuana Use. The most prevalent behavior profile at both times was the Non-Users (with over half of the students having this profile), followed by Binge Drinkers and Bingers with Marijuana Use. Cigarette Smokers were the least prevalent behavior profile. Gender, race/ethnicity, early onset of alcohol use, grades in high school, membership in the honors program, and friendship goals were all significant predictors of substance use behavior profile.

Despite a growing literature on college students' sexual behaviors, little is known about how sexual behaviors, and their associations with alcohol, differ for college and noncollege attenders, and whether these patterns represent changes during college or an extension of pre‐college behaviors. This paper applied time‐varying effect models to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to examine (1) prevalence of four sexual behaviors from ages 14 to 24 and (2) how their association with frequent heavy episodic drinking varied across these ages for college and noncollege attenders. Nonattenders have higher prevalence of all sexual behaviors than college attenders across most ages; however, the association between heavy episodic drinking and sexual behaviors is stronger for college attenders during ages 18–20.