Finally, we examined whether the alcohol use latent factors mediated the relationship between age 11 predictors and age 16 risky sex. Mediation effects were tested regardless of whether there were significant direct effects between the age 11 predictors and alcohol trajectories and risky sex, given that the requirement of a direct effect prior to testing for mediation has been shown to significantly reduce statistical power to detect an effect (Shrout and Bolger 2002).
