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Medication

Description

Specific Information: Medication

This section records the prescribed medications the subject took during the recall period. Medications were elicited through the following question: "In the past N months, have you been on or been prescribed a medication that was to help with your emotions or behavior?" Below is a list of specific types of information collected for the medication calendar:

A more detailed list of the information available in these calendars appears below.

Additional sections related to this calendar

Other sections of the Sanctions and Interventions calendar offer variables that supplement the information contained herein (see "Calendar Data/Sanctions and Interventions" for additional codebook sections). Specifically:

Be sure to review the descriptions for each of these codebook sections in order to obtain a complete understanding of the information that we have available regarding sanctions and interventions.

Descriptive Information: Monthly Data Characterizing the Recall Period

As a standard practice, the specific calendar information will be accompanied by four variables which describe the recall period. This information is important for the user to consider when attempting to use data characterizing the recall period (e.g., measures) in conjunction with the monthly-level calendar data. In addition, this information is useful if the user is viewing events from a developmental perspective. These variables include:

In addition, each dataset includes five variables which describe basic information related to the interview. These are explained in full detail in the "Interview Information" section under "Measures". These variables include the completion status of the interview, the date of the interview, version number in which the interview was conducted, the number of months in the recall period, and the number of days in the recall period.

General Information: Use of monthly life calendar data

Data regarding the participant's prescribed medications is captured using a monthly life-calendar approach (Belli, 1998; Caspi, Moffitt, Thornton, & Freedman, 1996), where the research participant is provided with a visual calendar that contextualizes the recall of research data by anchoring information to salient events. Specifically, individuals are first asked to recount salient events which occurred in the recall period (e.g. birthdays, deaths) and this information remains visible to the participant as an anchor point for the timing of events in each of several life calendar domains. This approach thus creates an integrated view of activities in all of the domains examined, has firm roots in the science of how people remember events and life situations (Bradburn, Rips, and Shevell, 1987; Belli, 1998), and capitalizes on these processes to generate accounts of past events. On a practical level, it provides researchers with a richer set of data points. Instead of simply getting a summary measure of life changes over an extended recall period, the monthly life-calendar places these changes at specific points in time, opening up the possibility of examining sequences of events and potential causal mechanisms within individuals (Fals-Stewart, 2003; Mulvey, et al., 2006).

General Information: Conversion of data to linear months

The monthly Pathways data, in its raw form, is not suited for some kinds of analytic approaches (e.g., trajectory analysis). Each time point interview allows for a maximum of eight or 14 months in the recall period, depending on the follow-up wave (eight months was the maximum for time points 6-36 and 14 was the maximum for time points 48-84). This means that there is a corresponding variable in the dataset reflecting events occurring in each of those months through a maximum of 14 months (the outer limit of any of the possible months covered). If however, the recall period did not include the maximum number of months (as is most often the case), there will be variables with no data. For example, subject 1 has a recall period of five months for follow-up 12 so this means he/she will have data in five monthly variables, but not in the remaining nine. Subject 2, has seven months in the recall period for follow-up 12 so he/she will have data in all but seven of the monthly variables. The recall length is set by programming code based on the current date in relationship to the date of the previous interview (see "Interview Information" under Measures for a more detailed description of how the length of the recall period is determined). However, the programming code did permit the interviewer to "reset" by hand the length of the recall period. This was done infrequently, but in some instances it created a situation where we obtained two reports of the same month. For example, follow-up 6 covered months January to June and the interviewer resets the follow-up 12 recall period to start with June (leading to two different reports for the month of June). A series of data cleaning decisions (described in the "Medication Calendar Documentation") were implemented to correct these situations but we note them here because they are relevant to the conversion of the data to linear months.

The "linear months" data set-up corrects these two situations. The "linear months" data reformats the variables so that each variable is a sequential representation of life event data for each month of the research participant's life from the baseline interview forward. In this format, variables that were place-markers for months not covered in the recall period are eliminated and situations where there were two reports for the same month are corrected. Thus, "linear month 8" actually represents eight calendar months from the baseline and "linear month 16" is actually 16 months past the baseline interview.

A specific list of variables available in the linear format is provided below. Also provided is a "map" to link the linear month back to the recall period and month in which the information was originally collected. This is important to know when recall-level data is being used in conjunction with the monthly event calendar data.

Data Issues

Items available regarding medication

For an overview and a detailed list of the questions included with this calendar please select the link(s) provided below the table. In addition to providing an overview of the "flow" of the calendar and a detailed listing of the questions, this document notes version issues (i.e. questions/variables that are only present for a sub-sample due to their later addition to the interview) and provides other information that is critical to using and interpreting the data correctly. The table below gives you an overview of issues related to each construct noted above and it also provides you with the page numbers within our detailed document that address each of these constructs. Please be sure to consider this information carefully before moving forward with your analysis.

Click here to download a detailed document in PDF format.

Description of Variable Variable Name Version Change Page Number
By recall period
Prescribed any medications for emotion/behavior problems S#Medication 6
Number of unique medications S#NumberMeds 9
By month
Medication
Whether subject was taking any medications S#MedCal_OnMeds_M## 8
Number of different medications the subject took that month S#MedCal_NumMeds_M## 8
Coded medication name for medication #1 taken that month S#MedCal_Med01_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #2 taken that month S#MedCal_Med02_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #3 taken that month S#MedCal_Med03_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #4 taken that month S#MedCal_Med04_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #5 taken that month S#MedCal_Med05_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #6 taken that month S#MedCal_Med06_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #7 taken that month S#MedCal_Med07_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #8 taken that month S#MedCal_Med08_Code_M## 6, 7
Coded medication name for medication #9 taken that month S#MedCal_Med09_Code_M## 6, 7
Data characterizing the recall period
Subject age at each month (truncated) S#SubjAge_M## 11
Subject age at each month (continuous) S#CTSubjAge_M## 11
Community vs. Institution month marker S#CommunityMonth_M## 10
Number of days covered in each month S#NDays## 11
Calendar month linked to each s#m# S#RealDate## 11
Medication data available for each unique medication (for a maximum of 9 medications within each recall period)
Coded medication name S#MedCal_Med##_Code 8
Coded medication category S#MedCal_Med##_Category 8
Number of months took each medication S#MedCal_Med##_Count 9
How regularly the subject took the medication compared to the prescribed dosage S#MedCal_Med##_Comply X 9
By linear month
Medication
Whether subject was taking any medications L##MedCal_OnMeds 12, 13
Number of different medications the subject took that month L##MedCal_NumMeds 12, 13
Coded medication name for medications #1 through 18 (for a maximum of 18 unique medications through 84months) L##MedCal_Med01_Code to L##MedCal_Med18_Code 12, 13
Data characterizing the recall period
Subject age at each month (truncated) L##SubjAge 12
Subject age at each month (continuous) L##CTSubjAge 12
Community vs. Institution month marker L##CommunityMonth 12, 14
Number of days covered in each month L##NDays 12
Calendar month linked to each s#m# L##RealDate 12
Recall period month (s#m#) mapped to linear month number ## L##TpMo 12
Additional sections supplement this calendar. Refer to the codebook section for each listing for more information
Interview Information -- contains variables that describe basic information related to the interview, such as interview completion status, interview date, version, and number of months and days covered by the recall period. This can be found under the "Interview Information" section of the Measures codebook.
Official Court Record Information -- contains a monthly plotting of arrests based on official record information. This can be found under "Codebook -- Official Court Record Information".
Out of Community Placements -- contains information regarding residential services received over the recall period, such as whether the youth had an overnight stay in seven different types of placements, length of stay, characteristics of each institution and specific services received. This can be found under the "Sanctions and Interventions" section of the Calendar codebook.
Community Based Services -- contains information regarding services the subject received while in the community, including the frequency of each service, focus (d/a treatment, anger management/social skills training), and circumstances (whether the service was court-ordered, whether the youth attended alone or with family). This can be found under the "Sanctions and Interventions" section of the Calendar codebook.
Contacts with the Justice System -- contains information regarding five different types of contact with the legal system, including whether the youth was picked up by the police, arrested and charged, had a court appearance, received a summons, or received police or court assistance as the victim of a crime. This can be found under the "Sanctions and Interventions" section of the Calendar codebook.
Court Monitoring Services -- contains information regarding four types of court monitoring services, including probation/parole, community intensive supervision, drug court programs, and court-ordered programs. This can be found under the "Sanctions and Interventions" section of the Calendar codebook.

References