The Life Trajectory Interview for Youth (LTI-Y): method development and psychometric properties of an instrument to assess life-course models and achievement.
This paper describes the rationale, development and psychometric properties of the Life Trajectory Interview for Youth (LTI-Y), an instrument designed to assess cognitive models of the life course and life-course achievement. This method was developed over 13 months of pilot research, and applied with a population of 350 participants from the Great Smoky Mountain Study, a longitudinal epidemiological study of mental health in western North Carolina comprising 1420 youths (among them 350 Cherokee Native Americans). The LTI-Y is designed to address gaps in our understanding of the links between large-scale structural conditions and social processes and individual outcomes such as mental health. Scale consistency (n = 350) was good to high, whereas test-retest reliability in a limited sample (n = 18) was moderate to good, depending on the domain and dimension of data considered. Overall, psychometric properties indicate fairly stable and consistent life-course strategies and priorities. Although developed and piloted with youth from Western North Carolina, the methods described could be applied to any population of interest.
Brown
Ryan A
RA
Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program, University of California - San Francisco & Berkeley, USA. rbrow11@emory.edu
Worthman
Carol M
CM
Costello
E Jane
EJ
Erkanli
Alaattin
A
D000124:Achievement; D000328:Adult; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological / Q000379:methods*; D019369:Life; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results