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:
- For each unique medication taken during the recall period: we obtain the number of months the subject reported taking the medication, and whether they complied with the prescribed dosage of each. Each unique medication was subsequently assigned a three-digit code based on the medication name, and a three-digit medication classification code (e.g., antipsychotic vs. antidepressant, etc.). This coding scheme used was developed for the MacArthur Risk Assessment study (see Monahan et al, 2001) with new medications added as needed.
- For each month in the recall period: a marker for whether they took any medication that month and if so, the number of different medications, as well as the coded medication name of each medication.
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:
- Out of Community Placements. Information regarding residential services received over the recall period. Specifically, whether the youth had an overnight stay in ten different types of placements; the length of stay; characteristics of each institution and specific services received during their stay.
- Community based services. Information regarding services the subject received while in the community, including the frequency each service was received by month, focus (for d/a treatment, anger management/social skills training), and circumstances (whether the service was court-ordered, whether the youth attended alone or with family).
- Court monitoring services. Information regarding four types of court monitoring services, including probation/parole, community intensive supervision, drug court programs, and court-ordered groups.
- Contacts with the justice system. 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.
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:
- The actual number of days in each month that is represented in the calendar data.
- The calendar month and year mapped to the recall month (e.g., if S1M04 covers February 2003, the 'number of days' value for that month will be 28, and the calendar month associated with S1M04 will be 02/2003, "RealDate").
- The subject's age at each month of the recall period, available in two forms: 1) the subject's age truncated to a whole number, and 2) the age as a continuous variable. (The subject age at the time of the interview is available in the "Demographics" codebook, available under "Measures").
- A marker indicating whether each month of the recall period is a community or institution month, where an institution month is defined as a month where the subject spent eight or more days across the following type of out of community placements: drug/alcohol facility, psychiatric hospital or unit, jail or prison, detention, YDC or ADJC, contracted residential treatment (general), and contracted residential treatment (mental health). These setting types are described in detail in the "Out of Community Placements" codebook, available under "Calendars".
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
- The follow06 through follow36 timepoints allow for a maximum of eight months in the recall period, while follow48 and later will have a maximum of 14. Note that while variables for months nine through 14 are included in the datasets for follow06 through follow36, these are essentially place markers and in no instance will any case have data for these months until the follow48 period (see description above).
- In some situations, both the generic and brand name for the same medication was listed within the same timepoint. After consulting with a practicing psychiatrist, we merged these medications into one, as it is unlikely that they would have been prescribed both the generic and brand name of the same medication.
- Each subject was allowed to report a maximum of 70 unique medications within each recall period, however there has never been a case where someone reported more than nine. While each timepoint will have variables for medications one through nine, most cases will have data for fewer than nine.
- Beginning with version 01.19, the medication compliance questions are skipped if the interview is conducted in a federal facility.
- A programming error occurred with the introduction of the federal prison check noted above that caused the medication compliance questions to be skipped for every subject, even when the interview was not conducted in a federal facility. As a result, two cases at follow36, 36 cases at follow48 and 27 cases at follow60 are missing medication compliance data. Cases with this issue are noted with a missing value code of -700 (Data missing as a result of a programming error). This issue was resolved prior to the start of the 72 and 84month interviews.
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
- Monahan, J., Steadman, H., Silver, E., Appelbaum, P., Robbins, P., Mulvey, E., Roth, L., Grisso, T., & Banks, S. (2001). Rethinking Risk Assessment: The MacArthur Study of Mental Disorder and Violence. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Caspi, A., Moffitt, T., Thornton, A., Friedman, D., Amell, J., Harrington, H., et al. (1996). The Life History Calendar: A research and clinical assessment method for collecting retrospective event-history data. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, 6(2), 101-114.
- Belli, R.F. (1998). The structure of autobiographical memory and the event history calendar: Potential improvements in the quality of retrospective reports in surveys. Memory, 6(4), 383-406.