EXAMINING SYSTEMATIC DIFFERENCES IN ADAPTATION TO CHRONIC ILLNESS - AGROWTH MODELING APPROACH

Understanding the developmental nature of the course of individual ada ptation to chronic illness has been limited by emphasis on group chang e. This paper proposes a new method of examining longitudinal data to describe individual differences in adaptation using individual growth curves. Two applications of CURVE growth modeling were used with sampl es of children with juvenile diabetes, children with juvenile rheumato id arthritis, and healthy control children to discriminate among compe ting models of adjustment. Tucker-Lewis incremental fit measures indic ate that among competing models of adjustment for both emotional distr ess and behavior problems, unique patterns of adjustment best explain the data. Factor (growth) scores that represent these unique patterns are utilized in further analyses. The benefits of this new conceptual and statistical model are described.