Svetlana,
I think we need more information to give better advice. This paragraph is
clear.
>>I have five entry cohorts of children who were placed in foster care
during different fiscal years. Specifically, some of them were placed in
FY04-05, some of them were placed in FY05-06, etc. There groups are
independent because those who were placed in foster care in FY05-06 were
not in foster care during FY04-05.
This paragraph is not.
>>I would like to examine the number of mental health services they
received during a five-year period (i.e., changes over time).
Tell us about how mental health services were recorded. For instance, do you
have the start and stop date for each service episode; the services received
over the past 'x' many months as in a 'yes, the service was delivered', 'no,
it was not' format; the number of sessions, etc. What sort of time unit are
you thinking of using to aggregate services? Quarters, semi-annually,
annually? Lastly, is service delivery relatively rare, meaning that many
kids receive no services (hopefully, meaning they don't need them) in a time
unit or do most kids receive services with some getting many and some
getting few?
Also, I don't understand exactly what you want to know. What I mean is this:
is the focus on within-cohort change in service utilization over the
followup interval; is it on simply the aggregate number of services used
over the interval; is it on between cohort differences; or is it on cohort
by time interactions?
Gene Maguin
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