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. 2022 Dec 2:10:101940.
doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2022.101940. eCollection 2023.

Methods for analysing the relationship between poverty, parental work intensity, child emotional symptoms and conduct problems over time

Patricio Troncoso  1 , Morag Treanor  1
Affiliations

Methods for analysing the relationship between poverty, parental work intensity, child emotional symptoms and conduct problems over time

Patricio Troncoso et al. MethodsX. .

Abstract

This article exposes the methods employed to analyse the complex associations between poverty and work intensity over time on the longitudinal trajectories of mental health wellbeing in a cohort of children. This study used data from nine waves of birth cohort 1 of the Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) study (2005/06-2017/18) to fit a bivariate multilevel non-linear growth curve model for the change in conduct problems and emotional symptoms of children over time with the trajectories of poverty and parental work intensity over time as the main covariates of interest. We explain in detail: (a) how we arrive at valid measures for our outcome of interest by testing for longitudinal measurement invariance and (b) the principled approach of growth mixture modelling undertaken to derive our main covariates of interest. Both procedures are the preamble for the main model of interest that addresses the substantive research question of how changes over time in poverty and parental employment are associated with changes over time in children's wellbeing.•We expose the rationale behind and the procedures for implementing Longitudinal Measurement Invariance testing for the repeated measures of emotional and conduct problems.•We expose the rationale behind and the procedures for implementing a growth mixture modelling approach to derive longitudinal measures of poverty and work intensity.•We provide details of the bivariate growth curve model fitted to analyse the effect of the derived longitudinal measures of poverty and work intensity on the valid longitudinal measures of emotional and conduct problems.

Keywords: Children's mental health; Conduct problems; Emotional wellbeing; Growing Up in Scotland; Growth Curve Modelling; Longitudinal Measurement Invariance Growth mixture modelling Multivariate Growth Curve Modelling; Multivariate Multilevel Modelling; Parental work intensity; Poverty.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image, graphical abstract
Graphical abstract
Fig 1
Fig. 1
Trajectories of the predicted probabilities of being poor by latent class.
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Trajectories of the predicted scores of work intensity by latent class.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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