Our clinically applicable method assigns a child's or adolescent's BMI value to a group with a known probability of overweight or obesity in adulthood.

Evaluating overall model fit for growth curve models involves 3 challenging issues. (a) Three types of longitudinal data with different implications for model fit may be distinguished: balanced on time with complete data, balanced on time with data missing at random, and unbalanced on time. (b) Traditional work on fit from the structural equation modeling (SEM) perspective has focused only on the covariance structure, but growth curve models have four potential sources of misspecification: within-individual covariance matrix, between-individuals covariance matrix, marginal mean structure, and conditional mean structure. (c) Growth curve models can be estimated in both the SEM and multilevel modeling (MLM) frameworks; these have different emphases for the evaluation of model fit. In this article, the authors discuss the challenges presented by these 3 issues in the calculation and interpretation of SEM- and MLM-based fit indices for growth curve models and conclude by identifying some lines for future research.

Background Despite its popularity, little is known about the measurement invariance of the Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 (PHQ‐9) across U.S. sociodemographic groups. Use of a screener shown not to possess measurement invariance could result in under/over‐detection of depression, potentially exacerbating sociodemographic disparities in depression. Therefore, we assessed the factor structure and measurement invariance of the PHQ‐9 across major U.S. sociodemographic groups. Methods U.S. population representative data came from the 2005–2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cohorts. We conducted a measurement invariance analysis of 31,366 respondents across sociodemographic factors of sex, race/ethnicity, and education level. Results Considering results of single‐group confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), depression theory, and research utility, we justify a two‐factor structure for the PHQ‐9 consisting of a cognitive/affective factor and a somatic factor (RMSEA = 0.034, TLI = 0.985, CFI = 0.989). On the basis of multiple‐group CFAs testing configural, scalar, and strict factorial invariance, we determined that invariance held for sex, race/ethnicity, and education level groups, as all models demonstrated close model fit (RMSEA = 0.025–0.025, TLI = 0.985–0.992, CFI = 0.986–0.991). Finally, for all steps ΔCFI was <−0.004, and ΔRMSEA was <0.01. Conclusions We demonstrate that the PHQ‐9 is acceptable to use in major U.S. sociodemographic groups and allows for meaningful comparisons in total, cognitive/affective, and somatic depressive symptoms across these groups, extending its use to the community. This knowledge is timely as medicine moves towards alternative payment models emphasizing high‐quality and cost‐efficient care, which will likely incentivize behavioral and population health efforts. We also provide a consistent, evidence‐based approach for calculating PHQ‐9 subscale scores.

In a 4-year longitudinal study, the authors investigated effects of retention in first grade on children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors; social acceptance; and behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement. From a large multiethnic sample (n = 784) of children below the median on literacy at school entrance, 124 retained children were matched with 251 promoted children on the basis of propensity scores (probability of being retained in first grade estimated from 72 baseline variables). Relative to promoted children, retained children were found to benefit from retention in both the short and longer terms with respect to decreased teacher-rated hyperactivity, decreased peer-rated sadness and withdrawal, and increased teacher-rated behavioral engagement. Retained children had a short-term increase in mean peer-rated liking and school belongingness relative to promoted children, but this advantage showed a substantial decrease in the longer term. Retention had a positive short-term effect on children's perceived school belonging and a positive longer term effect on perceived academic self-efficacy. Retention may bestow advantages in the short-term, but longer term detrimental effects on social acceptance may lead to the documented longer term negative effects of retention.Keywords grade retention; growth curve model; propensity score; optimal matching; psychosocial outcomes For at least the past 4 decades, grade retention, the practice of having a student who has been in a given grade level for a full school year to remain at that level for a subsequent school year, has been a common but controversial educational practice (Holmes, 1989;Jackson, 1975;Lorence, 2006). With the increase in high stakes testing that began in the early 1990s and the related requirement that students meet grade-level academic competencies, grade retention has increased in frequency (Bali, Anagnostopoulos, & Roberts, 2005;Gootman, 2005;Roderick & Nagaoka, 2005). In 2004, U.S. Census data revealed that 9.6% of U.S. youths ages 16-19 years had been retained in grade one or more times. In Texas, the location of the current study, during the 2003-2004 school year, retention in first grade, the focal grade in the current study, was 6. 4%, compared with 5.8% in 1994-1995, prior (Texas Education Agency, 2005). These data suggest an increase of more than 10%, as compared with a decade earlier, in the proportion of children being retained in first grade.Given the prevalence of grade retention, one might expect that it enjoys strong empirical support. On the contrary, the current empirical evidence of the effects of grade retention on both academic and social-emotional adjustment is inconsistent but is widely characterized in published literature as negative (for meta-analyses, see Holmes, 1989;Jimerson, 2001a; for narrative reviews, see Jimerson, 2001b;Shepard, Smith, & Marion, 1996). However, the widely acknowledged methodological limitations of published studies make it difficult to reach firm conclusions regarding a caus...

The authors investigated the relatively short-term and longer term effects of grade retention in 1st grade on the growth of mathematics and reading achievement over 4 years. The authors initially identified a large multiethnic sample (n = 784) of children who were below the median in literacy at school entrance. From this sample, the authors closely matched 1 retained with 1 promoted child (n = 97 pairs) on the basis of propensity scores constructed from 72 background variables and compared growth of retained and promoted children using Rasch-modeled W scores and grade standard scores, which facilitate age-based and grade-based comparisons, respectively. When using W scores, retained children experienced a slower increase in both mathematics and reading achievement in the short term but a faster increase in reading achievement in the longer term than did the promoted children. When using grade standard scores, retained children experienced a faster increase in the short term but a faster decrease in the longer term in both mathematics and reading achievement than did promoted children. Some of the retention effects were moderated by limited English language proficiency, home-school relationship, and children’s externalizing problems.