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Latent Variables Quantifying Neighborhood Characteristics And Their Associations With Poor Mental Health., Katherine L. Forthman, Janna M. Colaizzi, Hung-Wen Yeh, Rayus Kuplicki, Martin P. Paulus

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Neighborhood characteristics can have profound impacts on resident mental health, but the wide variability in methodologies used across studies makes it difficult to reach a consensus as to the implications of these impacts. The aim of this study was to simplify the assessment of neighborhood influence on mental health. We used a factor analysis approach to reduce the multi-dimensional assessment of a neighborhood using census tracts and demographic data available from the American Community Survey (ACS). Multivariate quantitative characterization of the neighborhood was derived by performing a factor analysis on the 2011-2015 ACS data. The utility of the latent variables …