Design and methodology for an integrative data analysis of coping power: Direct and indirect effects on adolescent suicidality

As suicide rates have risen in the last decade, there has been greater emphasis on targeting early risk conditions for suicidality among youth and adolescents as a form of suicide “inoculation”. Two particular needs that have been raised in this nascent literature are a) the dearth of examination of early intervention effects on distal suicide risk that target externalizing behaviors and b) the need to harmonize multiple existing intervention datasets for greater precision in modeling intervention effects on low base rate outcomes such as suicidal behaviors. This project, entitled “Integrative Data Analysis of Coping Power (CP): Effects on Adolescent Suicidality”, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), will harmonize and analyze data from 11 randomized controlled trials of CP (total individual-level N = 3183, total school-level N = 189). CP is an empirically-supported, child- and family-focused preventive intervention that focuses on reducing externalizing more broadly among youth who exhibit early aggression, which makes it ideally suited to targeting externalizing pathways to suicidality. The project utilizes three measurement and data analysis frameworks that have emerged across multiple independent disciplines: integrative data analysis (IDA), random treatment effects multilevel modeling (RTE-MLM), and propensity score weighting (PSW). If successful, the project will a) provide initial evidence that CP would have gender-specific indirect effects on suicidality through reductions in externalizing for boys and reductions in internalizing for girls and b) identify optimal conditions under which CP is delivered (e.g., groups, individuals, online) across participants on reductions in suicidality and other key intermediate endpoints.