An investigation of maternal and adolescent depressed mood using a latent trait-state model

A latent trait-state (LTS) model was used with data from 4 waves of measure ment to investigate several aspects of maternal and adolescent depressed mo od with a sample of 536 mothers and their adolescent offspring. The LTS mod el provides a novel method of decomposing repeated measures data into compo nents representing both stable (trait) and fluctuating (state) features of attributes, in this application of depressed mood for mothers and their ado lescent offspring. The percentage of variance attributable to trait versus state components of depressed mood, as measured by the Center for Epidemiol ogic Studies-Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977), was approximately equal for mothers and their offspring, suggesting substantial stable (i.e., trait) an d fluctuating (i.e., state) features of depressed mood for adolescents and female adults. To investigate the equivalence of the correlation between sc ores for trait depression among mothers and daughters and mothers and sons, constrained soup structural equation models were specified. Findings indic ated that the hypothesis of equivalence (i.e., correlation for mothers-daug hters equals correlation for mothers-sons) could not be rejected and the re sulting correlations were .24 and .27, respectively. Exogenous (independent ) variables were differentially predictive of maternal versus adolescent tr ait depression. Maternal trait depression was predicted by lower family inc ome, lower family cohesion, lower perceived social support, and higher pare ntal role stress. Adolescent trait depression was predicted by lower percei ved family support, lower grade point average, more stressful life events, and female gender.