Social Survey Analysis

Harvard School of Public Health surveyed on alcohol and drug use among college students over the span of a decade. We are interested in examining the relationship between smoking and drinking behaviors on academic performance of college students. As is the case with many surveys in behavioral and social studies, the smoking and drinking behaviors are measuresd indirectly through several highly correlatied items in the questionaire. We apply a structural equation model to summarze a large number of variables into a smaller set of latent variables, and study the interrelationships among observed variables and latent variables.