Effects of environmental factors on psychological adjustment in very low birthweight and higher birthweight jamaican adolescents

Abstract

This chapter discusses the effects of environmental factors on psychological adjustment in very low birthweight and higher birthweight Jamaican adolescents. It focuses on Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) Jamaican children and their higher birthweight (HBW) peers. All research participants are Black, eliminating concerns regarding comparisons across different races, and some of the sociocultural confounds of race and SES often emerging from other studies. Most hospital care in Jamaica is based on the practice of socialized medicine and because of the need for hospitalization in one of the few centralized institutions in that nation that provide neonatal intensive care, almost all VLBW survivors in Jamaica receive uniform care. Prenatal and perinatal health care services are scarce in contrast to the industrialized nations, but service utilization varies less than in some industrialized nations where the interaction between race, SES, and service utilization is a major issue for researcher. Most measures employed in Jamaican-based research are either used in their current form or slightly modified in language and content for that population. The psychometric properties of such measures are unknown, making structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques most appropriate as they allow the simultaneous examination of the measurement and structural model.