Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., M.Ed., B.A. - US grants

A number of social, psychological, and biological events co-occur during puberty, making this developmental period a time of stress for some and a time of rapid and multifaceted change for all. Previous studies of girls' psychological adaptation to pubertal development have not emphasized the endogenous and exogenous variables that mediate between biological change and psychological outcome nor have they examined girls' reactions to differential rates of pubertal progress, asynchronies in pubertal indices, or timing of maturational events, especially with regard to delayed puberty. Two hundred and twenty girls will be followed longitudinally, being seen twice a year for a four year span. One hundred and ten will be followed from fifth to eighth grade and 110 from seventh to tenth grade. Approximately one-quarter will be drawn from a sample known to be at risk for delayed puberty and asynchronies in physical development--ballet students in professional dance companies. The other three-quarters will be normal students from comparable demographic backgrounds. Current physical indices of pubertal status (Tanner staging, growth parameters), exogenous variables (peer referent groups, family relationships and stress, maternal attitudes about puberty), and endogenous variables (feelings about pubertal change, temperamental characteristics, body image) will be examined as they related to psychological adaptation (psychological adjustment, weight, and eating-related problems). In addition, the girls' activities and food intake will be assessed via 4-day diaries and 24-hour recall interviews. The major goals of the study are to examine: 1) physical, social & psychological precursors to eating-related behaviors in adolescent girls, 2) the antecedents to psychological adjustment in girls, 3) the relationship of pubertal status, especially delayed and asynchronous puberty to psychological functioning, 4) the developmental course & body size estimation in the adolescent girls and the factors that may influence the emergence of body image distortions.

The project, a longitudinal study of adolescent girls currently in its second year and funded by the NIH, has three major goals. These are: 1) psychological adaptation to pubertal change in terms of timing, rate, and duration of maturational events as well as asynchrony in pubertal growth; 2) the development of eating problems and weight related concerns, especially as they relate to pubertal change; and 3) the goodness of fit between environmental demands and individual adaptation to them as illustrated by the case of delayed puberty in dance and nondance students. The role of endogenous and exogenous variables will be examined for all three goals. Two hundred girls are being followed longitudinally for a two year period. One level are being followed from 5th - 9th grade (Group 1) and 100 from 7th - 11th grade (Group 2). Subjects were drawn from a population known to be at risk for delayed puberty and eating related problems -- private school students. In addition, one quarter of the girls in Group 2 are national ballet dance company school students; dancers exhibit a high incidence of eating problems and delayed puberty. Girls are seen yearly. Pubertal status is measured in terms of height, weight, skinfold thickness, and secondary sexual characteristics. Exogenous variables include peer and family relationships, dating patterns, residential patterns, and maternal attitudes about puberty, weight, and eating. Endogenous variables include temperamental characteristics, body image, feelings about pubertal change, intensity of exercise, and food intake. Psychological adaptation is measured in terms of eating related problems, psychopathology, and depression.

This project will study the prevalence and consequences of multigenerational child care and living arrangements. Its aims are fourfold: (1) to study the prevalence of grandchild care and co- residence with grandchildren among grandmothers of different ages, ethnicity and socioeconomic status; (2) to study the mental health, physical health, employment and income consequences of such arrangements for the grandmothers; (3) to study the prevalence of receiving care from grandparent and residing with grandparents among children of different ages, ethnicity and socioeconomic status categories; and (4) to study the cognitive, developmental and behavioral outcomes of these arrangements for children. Three different data sets will be used to achieve these aims. The National Survey of Families and Households will allow the estimation of national prevalence rates and making models of consequences of assuming child care responsibilities for grandmothers. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth will allow the estimation of these prevalence rates for children of the survey others, born between 1958 and 1965. The Baltimore study is a small 20-tear longitudinal study of a Black urban sample, which will allow us to examine the long term consequences of multigenerational arrangements throughout the life course. Findings will have implications for 1) issues related to development during early childhood; (2) correlates of mental, physical and economic well being of women in late adulthood; (3) understanding of alternative living arrangements in U.S. that emerged simultaneously with decreasing mortality and marital stability, increasing non-marital childbearing and women's participation in the labor force; and (4) developing policies concerned with optimizing the care of children at risk.

Adolescent girls are increasingly concerned with weight and thinness. When attempting to lose weight, girls often employ unhealthy practices such as fad diets or purging behaviors including induced vomiting and laxative use rather than adhering to a balanced diet and engaging in appropriate amounts of physical activity. Eating problems such as dieting, preoccupation with weight, and bingeing emerge during the adolescent years and have been associated with several serious health problems over and above frank eating disorders. The specific goals of this proposal are: (1) to investigate the development of eating behaviors during adolescence and young adulthood and the continuum of behaviors that constitute unhealthy patterns of eating, and to identify the specific patterns of behavior that lead to and result from engaging in unhealthy behaviors during adolescence or young adulthood; (b) to investigate the interrelationship of depression with eating disorders as well as the association of depressive affect and eating behaviors and problems in order to determine if common developmental processes apply across pathologies; and (c) to investigate whether, to what extent, and how relations in the family and maternal psychopathology are associated with the development of disturbed eating or clinical disorders. These goals will be achieved through the investigation of a sample of 238 young women (between the ages of 21 and 23) who have been followed longitudinally by this group of researchers for 8 years. The patterns of eating behaviors will be coded from interviews conducted with each young woman in the past year. This information will be analyzed in conjunction with questionnaire data, also obtained from these women, on family relationships, problem behaviors, psychological well-being, and eating attitudes. Comparisons to earlier reports of behaviors and functioning in these domains is also planned in order to assess the developmental processes associated with unhealthy and healthy behaviors. This is perhaps the only prospective, longitudinal investigation of eating behaviors and psychological well-being which has traversed the adolescent decade.

biomedical equipment purchase;

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Applicant's Abstract) The purpose of this research program is to conduct a prospective investigation of the biological correlates of social and emotional development during middle childhood and the beginning of puberty in African-American and White girls. Over the course of four years, 240 girls and their families from integrated, working and middle- class communities will be studied in order to examine the influence of individual and social factors on the psychological development of girls beginning in third and continuing through sixth grade. The goal of this project is to understand in what ways physiological processes and relation- ships with parents and peers set girls on various trajectories leading to more and less positive adjustment. Adjustment is defined in terms of three domains: emotional development, identity and self-concept, and school disengagement. The investigators' goal is to understand better the processes underlying development during middle childhood in order to add to the basic knowledge on development during this period as well as to identify the processes through which biological and contextual factors influence girls' adjustment and well-being during these years. Correlates of development to be considered are the onset of puberty, individual differences in responsivity to stress, family relationships and interactions, peer relationships, and identity and self-concepts. While biological and social interactions in development have been a focus of investigations of adolescence and infancy, little prospective research has focused on middle childhood; this is the age at which pubertal processes are initiated and at which peer relationships become more salient, and parental relationships may begin to change. The goal of this project is to understand in what ways physiological processes and relationships with parents and peers set girls on various trajectories leading to more and less positive adjustment. Adjustment is defined in terms of three domains: emotional development, identity and self-concept, and school disengagement. The project is designed to address six primary questions: (a) Do various indices of pubertal processes render girls at risk for problems in the three above mentioned domains? (b) Does high reactivity to potentially stressful situations amplify the potential effects of early pubertal development? (c) Do poor peer relationships prior to the onset of puberty intensify the effects of early development? (d) Do positive family relationships protect girls from the possible effects of early pubertal development or the effects of early puberty in conjunction with high reactivity? (e) Do life events, particularly those in family, influence pubertal timing? (f) Finally, are the associations among puberty, reactivity, and interpersonal relationships vis-a-vis adjustment similar or different for White and African-American girls? This final question is especially salient given the additional potential stressor of racial discrimination or rejection by peer groups based on racial membership that many minority girls are likely to experience.

This project examines the impact of neighborhood change (moving from high-poverty, predominantly minority neighborhoods into more affluent neighborhoods) on low-income parents and their children. Following a federal court order to remedy long-standing racial segregation in public housing and in schools, the city of Yonkers, NY built 200 units of low-rise public housing in mostly white, middle-income neighborhoods. Subsequently, a group of very low-income, mostly African-American and Latino families was moved into this housing between 1992 and 1994. This project would comprise a 2-year follow-up study of these families, who will be re-interviewed to examine short-term adaptation to their new neighborhoods. This project will permit a closer examination of the human capital and other social factors thought to mediate the impacts of neighborhood on the social attainment of families. Several factors make this an exceptionally rich longitudinal data set for analyzing neighborhood effects: the project combines the best outcome measures of previous survey studies on housing mobility with social process and social interaction measures highlighted in a long tradition of ethnographic research on neighborhoods; a quasi-experimental design is used to minimize selection bias; a large breadth of measured variables is employed; a high survey completion rate (90%) was attained at baseline; multiple levels of data collection (parents, children and youth) are used; detailed neighborhood ecology data beyond the census data typically used in this form of research is available; and the inclusion of a significant sub-population of Latinos and African-Americans is possible. The project is relevant to a number of the research priorities central to the Human Capital Initiative, especially those related to workforce, neighborhoods and families.

DESCRIPTION: The overall goal of this proposed research is to examine the impact of neighborhood change -- moving from high-poverty, predominantly minority neighborhoods into more affluent neighborhoods -- on low-income parents and their children. Following a federal court order to remedy long-standing racial segregation in public housing and in schools, the City of Yonkers, NY, built two hundred units of low-rise public housing in mostly white, middle-income neighborhoods. Subsequently, a group of very low-income, mostly African American and Latino families was moved into this housing between 1992 and 1994. This project would comprise a two-year follow-up study of those 317 African American and Latino families (both those who moved to a new neighborhood and those who did not) of Yonkers who have agreed to participate in this study and were interviewed once at baseline. They will be reinterviewed two years later to examine short-term adaptation to their new neighborhood. NIH support will enable the investigators to move beyond a more narrowly focused program evaluation of mobility programs, like Yonkers and Gautreaux -- whose basic premise is that moving to more affluent neighborhoods will promote the economic self-sufficiency of low-income families -- to a closer examination of the human capital or other social factors hypothesized to mediate the impacts of neighborhood on the social attainment of families. It will also allow the investigators to examine the effects of neighborhood residence on children and their families in the context of this study. Specific aims of the study are to: (1) assess neighborhood effects by comparing the 188 who moved (the "mover" families) in their unit-based housing in middle-class neighborhoods with the 149 families who stayed (the "stayers") in their low-income, mostly African American and/or Latino neighborhoods, on key outcomes including education, job attainment, job stability, parenting and family functioning, and health status; (2) compare mover children (7-11 years of age) and youth (12-17 years of age) with stayer children and youth on key outcomes, including school achievement, juvenile delinquency, school engagement, peer networks, and employment; (3) compare effects of moving to a new neighborhood on children (ages 7-11) with those on youth (ages 12-17) so as to assess the significance of developmental stage for neighborhood effects; (4) compare effect on subgroups of movers; (5) describe effects of the physical design and location of the scattered-site housing -- "inward" vs. "outward" -- on behavior and outcome; (6) explore the effects of racially desegregated neighborhood on school preferences (e.g. academic vs. vocational) and the peer group formations of mover children and youth.

The NICHD Research Network on Child and Family Well-being proposal. Enhancing the Well-Being of Children and Parents: Research, Practice and Policy has as its goal the generation of policy-relevant research via three Individual Research Projects and four Cooperative Research Projects. The PI of the proposal is Brooks-Gunn, a developmental pscyhologist at Columbia University's Teachers College. The Co-Investiagors are a child psychiatrist, a pediatrician, a sociologist an economist in social work an eduational psychologist, and a developmental psychologist--Felton Earls Marie McCormick, Sara McLanahan, Irv Garfinkel, John Love, and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale. The proposed projects involve analyses of large longitudinal and often nationally representative, data sets designed by inter-disciplinary teams. These data sets include the Fragile Families Study, the Early Head Start National Evaluation, the Welfare Reform and Children in Three Cities Study, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the PSID-Child Supplement, the Yonkers Study, the Moving to Opportunity Study, and the Infant Health and Development Program. Four are experiments, and four are not. The projects all focus on children and the contexts in which they grow up, with a particular emphasis on the family and on the family's interaction with other contexts (child care, school, neighborhood, and work place). Ecological, risk and resilience, and resource models are combined to look at child well-being as a function of contexts and policies. Child well-being measures include achievement, emotional well-being, physical health, and social relationships. This proposal considers three broad developmental periods--young childhood (birth to 5 years), late childhood (6 to 10 years), and young adolescence (11 to 15 years). Contextual influences are hypothesized to vary as a function of developmental epoch, outcome, and initiat child characteristics. The Individual Research Projects are entitled (i) Families and Early Intervention, Preschool and School; (ii) Families and Neighborhoods; and (iii) Families and Work, Time, Income and Stress. The Cooperative Research Projects are (i) Child and Family Well-being Indicators and National Data Sets; (ii) Welfare, Anti-poverty, and Residential Policies (as examined via experimental demonstrations); (iii) Father, Marriage, Paternal Involvement and Policy; and (iv) Quality of Child Care and Policy.

This study is a prospective investigation of the biological and contextual correlates of emotional development during middle childhood and the beginning of adolescence in African-American and White children. Over a four-year period, 300 boys and their parents from integrated, working and middle-class communities will be seen yearly. We ask "in what ways do physiological processes and relationships with parents and peers set boys on various trajectories leading to more and less positive emotional functioning?" Aggression (including affective disposition and overt and covert behavior) and behaviors (anxious symptoms and feelings) are the focus of this study. The biological correlates focus on the HPA and HPG axes. The social correlates involve the peer, school, and family contexts. Correlates of development to be considered are: (a) the onset of pubertal processes (increases in FSH secretion, development of secondary sexual characteristics, increases in Testosterone), (b) individual differences in responsivity to stress (using social, cognitive, and physiological challenge tasks), (c) baseline measures of stress (cortisol levels in the early morning, differences between early morning and afternoon levels of cortisol), (d) parent-child interactions (conflict resolution, arousal, parental harshness and firm control) and parental characteristics (temperament and reactivity), (e) family context and environment (single vs. two parent household, neighborhood characteristics), (f) peer relationships (deviant behaviors of peers, rejection, prosocial interactions), and (g) racial discrimination and socialization (for African-American children and parents). While biological and social interactions in development have been a focus of investigations of adolescence and infancy, little prospective research has focused on middle childhood, the time when pubertal processes are initiated and peer and family relationships begin to be redefined.

The NICHD Research Network on Child and Family Well-being proposal. Enhancing the Well-Being of Children and Parents: Research, Practice and Policy has as its goal the generation of policy-relevant research via three Individual Research Projects and four Cooperative Research Projects. The PI of the proposal is Brooks-Gunn, a developmental pscyhologist at Columbia University's Teachers College. The Co-Investiagors are a child psychiatrist, a pediatrician, a sociologist an economist in social work an eduational psychologist, and a developmental psychologist--Felton Earls Marie McCormick, Sara McLanahan, Irv Garfinkel, John Love, and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale. The proposed projects involve analyses of large longitudinal and often nationally representative, data sets designed by inter-disciplinary teams. These data sets include the Fragile Families Study, the Early Head Start National Evaluation, the Welfare Reform and Children in Three Cities Study, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the PSID-Child Supplement, the Yonkers Study, the Moving to Opportunity Study, and the Infant Health and Development Program. Four are experiments, and four are not. The projects all focus on children and the contexts in which they grow up, with a particular emphasis on the family and on the family's interaction with other contexts (child care, school, neighborhood, and work place). Ecological, risk and resilience, and resource models are combined to look at child well-being as a function of contexts and policies. Child well-being measures include achievement, emotional well-being, physical health, and social relationships. This proposal considers three broad developmental periods--young childhood (birth to 5 years), late childhood (6 to 10 years), and young adolescence (11 to 15 years). Contextual influences are hypothesized to vary as a function of developmental epoch, outcome, and initiat child characteristics. The Individual Research Projects are entitled (i) Families and Early Intervention, Preschool and School; (ii) Families and Neighborhoods; and (iii) Families and Work, Time, Income and Stress. The Cooperative Research Projects are (i) Child and Family Well-being Indicators and National Data Sets; (ii) Welfare, Anti-poverty, and Residential Policies (as examined via experimental demonstrations); (iii) Father, Marriage, Paternal Involvement and Policy; and (iv) Quality of Child Care and Policy.

Abstract

Planning Grant for a Center for Integrative Developmental Science Focused on Development During Key Transitions

J. Lawrence Aber & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

The well-being of children and families remains a prominent issue on public agendas across the political spectrum. But problems in this area - child poverty, child abuse and neglect, violence, and unequal access to health care or education, to name a few - have outlasted numerous policy initiatives aimed at relieving them. The Institute for Child and Family Policy (ICFP) at Columbia University marshals the interdisciplinary resources of a leading research university to confront problems that have eluded the grasp of isolated disciplines. The National Science Foundation's Children's Research Initiative will allow ICFP to create a Working Group on Integrative Developmental Science. The purpose of the Working Group is to bring together scientists from a broad range of disciplines at Columbia (developmental psychology, educational psychology, social psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, economics, sociology, and social work) in order to design and plan new and more integrative forms of scientific inquiry into children's learning and development.

To understand - and develop solutions for - the intractable problems facing children and adolescents, the focus of inquiry will be on "turning points in children's development during key periods of transition." Independently, Columbia scientists and affiliates are already studying children during four key transitions over the first two decades of life: (1) Prenatal to Toddler years, (2) Preschool to Middle Childhood, (2) Middle Childhood to Adolescence, and (4) Adolescence to Young Adulthood. These transitions represent periods of dramatic growth and qualitative change in children's biological, social-emotional, and cognitive processes. They are also periods of important changes in the structure and meaning of children's interpersonal relationships and social and learning contexts.

During these key periods of transition, children's development is especially open or receptive to influence, positive and negative. The Working Group of scientists at Columbia proposes to design new studies of how certain experiences or events function as critical "turning points" (moments of decisive influence) in development. In order to pose and answer the most important scientific questions, it is necessary to effectively integrate both theories and methods across a range of disciplines. No single discipline or current cross-disciplinary collaboration is sufficiently integrative to arrive at the most important new scientific breakthroughs.

Over a nine-month planning period, the Working Group will: (1) hold the first Columbia Conference on Integrative Developmental Science to broaden and deepen the theoretical and analytic approaches scientists take to their studies; (2) organize and support 2-3 smaller research planning subgroups to design new multidisciplinary, integrative research on aspects of "turning points in development;" and (3) prepare a proposal for the National Science Foundation to create a Columbia University Center on Integrative Developmental Science that will conduct the studies designed by the subgroup(s).

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to examine the relationships among maternal employment, child care, parenting practices of behavior, and economic factors in families with children born in 1999 to 2000, in the wake of welfare reform and state requirements for low-income mothers of young children to enter the work force. We are interested in the linkages between timing, intensity, and stability of maternal employment in the first three years of life; the type, intensity, quality and stability of child care arrangements used by the family; the psychological climate of the family (including mental health of parents, relationship between the mother and father, conflict in the household, and stability of household members); and the parenting behavior of the mothers (discipline practices). We also will examine how maternal employment and child care in low-income households are associated with child cognitive, social, and emotional well being. This project would add a child care module to an ongoing panel study, the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being study. Using a sample of 1,700 children from 8 cities across the country, we would include child care observations and interviews with providers and parents when the children are 15- and 33-months of age. We would also assess child cognitive, social and emotional development, as well as parental practices and behaviors during home visits at 30- and 48-months. Our specific aims are to: (1) describe parental employment and child care patterns in a diverse sample of low-income families; (2) assess the relative influences of employment, child care, and family context on child well-being; (3) augment these models by examining possible moderating child and family factors; and (4) see whether changes in employment, child care, and family context predict changes in children's cognitive, social, and emotional well-being.

The NICHD Research Network on Child and Family Well-being proposal. Enhancing the Well-Being of Children and Parents: Research, Practice and Policy has as its goal the generation of policy-relevant research via three Individual Research Projects and four Cooperative Research Projects. The PI of the proposal is Brooks-Gunn, a developmental pscyhologist at Columbia University's Teachers College. The Co-Investiagors are a child psychiatrist, a pediatrician, a sociologist an economist in social work an eduational psychologist, and a developmental psychologist--Felton Earls Marie McCormick, Sara McLanahan, Irv Garfinkel, John Love, and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale. The proposed projects involve analyses of large longitudinal and often nationally representative, data sets designed by inter-disciplinary teams. These data sets include the Fragile Families Study, the Early Head Start National Evaluation, the Welfare Reform and Children in Three Cities Study, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the PSID-Child Supplement, the Yonkers Study, the Moving to Opportunity Study, and the Infant Health and Development Program. Four are experiments, and four are not. The projects all focus on children and the contexts in which they grow up, with a particular emphasis on the family and on the family's interaction with other contexts (child care, school, neighborhood, and work place). Ecological, risk and resilience, and resource models are combined to look at child well-being as a function of contexts and policies. Child well-being measures include achievement, emotional well-being, physical health, and social relationships. This proposal considers three broad developmental periods--young childhood (birth to 5 years), late childhood (6 to 10 years), and young adolescence (11 to 15 years). Contextual influences are hypothesized to vary as a function of developmental epoch, outcome, and initiat child characteristics. The Individual Research Projects are entitled (i) Families and Early Intervention, Preschool and School; (ii) Families and Neighborhoods; and (iii) Families and Work, Time, Income and Stress. The Cooperative Research Projects are (i) Child and Family Well-being Indicators and National Data Sets; (ii) Welfare, Anti-poverty, and Residential Policies (as examined via experimental demonstrations); (iii) Father, Marriage, Paternal Involvement and Policy; and (iv) Quality of Child Care and Policy.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to examine the intersection of maternal employment, child care, parenting practices/behavior, and economic factors in families with children born in 1999-2000, in the wake of welfare reform and state requirements for low-income mothers of young children to enter the work force. We are interested in the linkages among onset, intensity, and stability of maternal employment; the type, intensity, quality, and stability of child care arrangements used by the family; the psychological climate of the family (including mental health of parents, relationship between the mother and father, conflict in the household, and stability of household members); and the parenting behavior of the mothers (discipline practices and warmth) and the behavior of the child care providers. We also will examine how maternal employment and childcare in low-income households are associated with child cognitive and emotional well-being at 2 1/2 and 4 years of age (as indicated by child assessments, parental report, and child care provider report). This project would add a childcare module to an ongoing panel study, the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. The sample is 3,400 children from 16 cities across the country (selected to yield a nationally representative sample of unwed births in cities with populations over 200,000). Child care observations and interviews with providers and parents will occur at the 2 1/2 and 4 year follow-up, as well as assessments of child cognitive and emotional development, parental practices, and home environment during home visits at 2 1/2 and 4 years. Our specific aims are: (1) to collect data on parental employment, child care and child well-being via interviews and observations; (2) to describe parental employment and child care patterns in a nationally representative sample of low-income families living in cities with diverse policy contexts; (3) to assess the relative influences of employment, child care, and family context on child well-being and whether changes in these areas predict changes in children's cognitive and emotional well-being; and (4) to augment these models by examining possible moderating child (temperament, health status, gender) and family factors (parental relationships, parental mental health, parenting practices).

This proposal is designed to examine individual, family and neighborhood influences on young children's aggression, attention, and anxiety (mental health). These associations are explored using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), a multi-level study in which households were randomly selected from 80 Chicago neighborhoods stratified by race/ethnicity (7 categories including homogenous and heterogenous make-ups( and SES (high, medium, & low) to be representative of families living in a wide range of Chicago neighborhoods (N=2269, 16% European Americans, 35% African American, & 43% Latinos). For this proposal, 3 waves of data will be used for 2 cohorts of children, the first seen when they were 6 months and again at ages 3 and 5 (0 cohort), and the second seen at 3 years and again at ages 5 and 76 (3 cohort) Three types of emotional problems- aggression, anxiety and attentional difficulties-were measured when the 0 cohort was ages 3 and 5 and the 3 cohort was ages 3, 5, and 7. In addition, regulation measures (delay of gratification, motor control, and sustained attention) were collected for the 0 cohort at 6 months and 5 years. Neighborhood characteristics (income, poverty, racial/ethnic composition, employment, & residential stability) and processes (norms and collective efficacy, institutional resources, & ties and relationships were assessed just before wave 1 and at the time of wave 3. More proximal "micro-neighborhood" processes from 2 observations of neighborhoods collected at these same time points also will be coded. Funny characteristics (income, single- parenthood, race/ethnicity, parental employment, and turbulence) and processes (violence, conflict, and aggression, parental warmth/harshness, parental mental health, developmental stimulation, & routines & connectedness) were measured at all 3 waves. Child characteristics assessed include gender, neonatal health, and temperament. This project will address 5 primary questions: (a) Are individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics associated with young children's emotional health? (B) Do family processes mediate or moderate associations among individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics and young children's emotional health? (c) What are the salient features of "micro" neighborhood contexts of young children? Do these and other neighborhood processes mediate or moderate associations among individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics and young children's emotional health? (D) What is the distribution of self- regulation among preschool children drawn from a large, urban, and diverse sample interviewed in home-based settings? Does this distribution vary by child, family, and neighborhood influences and preschool children's emotional health? In sum, this investigation is a unique opportunity to address the role of neighborhoods in the lives of young children and their families, while using state-of-the-art methodologies to measure neighborhood processes as well as young children's behavior. It is expected that results from this study will address potential targets of intervention for programs aimed at improving young children's mental health.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study is designed to advance knowledge about the causes and consequences of exposure to violence (ETV) by focusing on temporal and spatial variation among children in witnessing and experiencing violence, and on the implications of childhood ETV over the life course. It will use three waves of data covering a 6-year period from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) (Wave I: 1995-1996, Wave II: 1998-1999, Wave III: 2002-2002). The PHDCN is a multilevel study in which 7 age cohorts of children and youth were selected from 80 Chicago neighborhoods stratified by race/ethnicity (including homogeneous and heterogeneous compositions) and SES (low, medium and high). The cohorts selected for our study were 6, 9, 12, and 15 at Wave I (N=3,323). Four types of ETV are measured: parent-child physical aggression, inter-spousal violence, violence in the community as rated by both primary caregivers and children, and family and friend suicidality. Focal child and youth outcomes include emotional and behavior problems, academic functioning, and premature transitions to adulthood. Characteristics of the children and their families and neighborhoods will be considered simultaneously. Our analytic plan includes the use of multilevel models, which are ideally suited to the study of children nested in families and neighborhoods, and longitudinal growth-curve and developmental trajectory models, which capitalize on data from multiple time points. The study has four main research aims: 1) to measure ETV in childhood and adolescence at multiple levels of analysis (e.g., neighborhood, family, and individual) and dynamically over time; 2) to examine multilevel correlates and causes of ETV in childhood and adolescence; 3) to examine a range of consequences of ETV in children's and adolescents' lives both concurrently and longitudinally; and 4) to examine multilevel contextually and developmentally sensitive mediators and moderators of ETV effects on child and adolescent outcomes.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Effortful control (EC), which reflects the self-regulatory aspect of early childhood temperament, develops considerably in the first five years of life. Optimal EC by preschool age is desirable because it affects children's socioemotional adjustment at school entry, which in turn predicts behavioral and academic growth throughout middle childhood and adolescence. Previous research has identified selected characteristics of children, their families, and their neighborhoods that influence early EC. However, only one such study has examined all three ecological contexts at once, and it was not designed for multilevel data analysis. Following Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model of development, we make use of a multilevel data set that was designed to study child development in context. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to analyze children sampled from diverse neighborhoods throughout Chicago. We select a cohort of children that was followed from birth/infancy to 6 years of age, and test the explanatory power of characteristics from three environmental contexts: the mother-child relationship, the family, and the neighborhood. Mother-child relationship characteristics include corporal punishment, maternal hostility, maternal warmth, and maternal depressive symptoms. Family characteristics include family instability, family conflict, inter-parental violence, and household chaos. Neighborhood characteristics include collective efficacy, disorder, and access to safe play spaces. In testing whether these environmental characteristics influence children's developing EC (adjusting for child, family, and neighborhood demographic characteristics), special attention will be paid to the possibility that they are differentially associated with two facets of EC - delay and motor control. We also test Belsky's differential susceptibility hypothesis by examining whether highly reactive infants are affected more than other infants by environmental predictors of EC. Last, we ask whether delay of gratification and motor control are differentially associated with three contemporaneous measures of socioemotional adjustment: externalizing, internalizing, and attention deficit behavior problems. Results should inform future interventions to improve children's EC. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This study addresses gaps in our knowledge about the antecedents and consequences of effortful control. Young children depend on effortful control, along with other facets of self-regulation, to manage behavioral impulses. Effortful control contributes to socioemotional, academic, and moral development, and is thus implicated in numerous public health problems such as attention deficit disorder, antisocial behavior, and health risk behaviors.

Interventions designed to reduce adolescent health risks often target parenting and family functioning. However, an ecological approach would suggest that interventions aimed at improving family functioning that exclusively target the family may be less efficient than interventions that target the contexts that give rise to family dysfunction. In keeping with this perspective, and in light of growing evidence that neighborhood residence has significant implications for family dynamics and adolescent health, the proposed study will examine adolescent health risk behaviors and their familial antecedents in the context of neighborhoods. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) - an innovative study designed specifically to study adolescent development in the context of urban neighborhoods - we will address the following research questions using multilevel modeling: (1) Does neighborhood disorganization (e.g., poverty, crime, social disorder) predict adolescent health risk behaviors (substance use, delinquency, risky sexual behavior)? Does family dysfunction (ineffective parenting, family conflict, parent depression, parent health risk behaviors) explain associations between neighborhood disorganization and adolescent health risk behaviors? (2) Do contextual supports (peer social support and institutional resources) provide a buffer against the adverse effects of neighborhood disorganization on family functioning? (3) Do contextual supports (neighborhood collective efficacy, extra-familial social support, institutional resources) provide a buffer against the adverse effects of family dysfunction on adolescent health risk behaviors? In sum, the proposed study will examine three contextual domains that could potentially be targeted in future interventions: neighborhood disorganization, parents'support systems, and adolescents'support systems. The sample is a socioeconomically and racially/ethnically diverse group of adolescents from Chicago (n = 2,344). Adolescents, who were aged 9, 12 or 15 at baseline, and their parents were interviewed 3 times over 6 years. Neighborhood-level information comes from a separate survey of residents, as well as observational ratings made by trained data collectors.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): From a public health perspective, moving to subsidized housing, to less poor neighborhoods, to housing developments with low rates of crime, or to more mixed income settings might reduce health disparities between children and families who have low income and those who do not. Children and young adolescents may be particularly influenced by housing given that they spend a large proportion of their time in their home neighborhood where the accessibility and quality of local amenities and institutions matter, and because they are influenced by their parents'responses to residential location. Receipt of in-place subsidized housing, the focus of our proposal, may help to improve the health and developmental trajectories of at-risk youth through multiple pathways. The proposed experimental research will utilize the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development's lottery system to identify treatment and control households that fit our study criteria. Group assignment will include families with children who move to a subsidized apartment in one of eleven newly constructed housing sites (treatment) and matched families who do not receive housing (control). This proposal's design improves and expands upon the design of earlier housing experiments in that it (a) compares the impact of moving to a new neighborhood versus staying in the same neighborhood among recipients of subsidized housing, (b) compares the impact of moving into mixed-income versus solely low- income buildings, (c) examines the impact of subsidized housing on near-poor families (rather than just families below the poverty threshold), (d) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the uptake of the offer is 90% (rather than less than one-half in Moving to Opportunity), and (e) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the families are likely to stay in the subsidized housing (in Moving to Opportunity, over half of those who did move ended up moving again, typically back to poor neighborhoods). Our proposed data collection strategy will include baseline data collection at time of application for housing, using a self-administered questionnaire to be completed by the primary caregiver and augmented by information obtained from the housing application itself. Follow-up assessments will include in-person interviews with the primary caregiver and detailed information on up to two co-resident children for each participating household. Our follow-up information on children will be collected by proxy for children under age eight and in-person with children ages eight to eighteen. Experimental analyses will be used to quantify the impact of moving to subsidized housing and additional exploratory analyses will be conducted to investigate the potential benefits of housing relative to neighborhoods and assess evidence of differential impacts among those receiving particular types of subsidized housing. Relationships among household, housing, and neighborhood features will be examined as potential outcomes as well as mediators of individual-level health outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The health of children and adults is influenced by the environments in which they live. Experimental research has shown that moving to new housing in particular kinds of neighborhoods may improve the life chances of poor families;however, previous research confounded housing- and neighborhood mobility and did not investigate the benefits of mixed-income housing developments. Our randomized experiment will address these shortcomings will NYC children and families who apply for in-place subsidized housing allocated through a housing lottery and test whether receipt of such housing improves the health and well-being of children and caregivers.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): From a public health perspective, moving to subsidized housing, to less poor neighborhoods, to housing developments with low rates of crime, or to more mixed income settings might reduce health disparities through multiple pathways. The proposed experimental research will utilize the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development's lottery system to identify treatment and control households that fit our study criteria. Group assignment will include households who move to a subsidized apartment in one of ten newly constructed housing sites (treatment) and matched households who do not receive housing (control). We estimate that our experimental sample will be comprised of about 1,300 participating treatment households and 1,690 lottery- matched controls. This proposal's design improves and expands upon the design of earlier housing experiments in that it (a) compares the impact of moving to a new neighborhood versus staying in the same neighborhood among recipients of subsidized housing, (b) compares the impact of moving into mixed-income versus solely low- income buildings, (c) examines the impact of subsidized housing on near-poor families (rather than just families below the poverty threshold), (d) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the uptake of the offer is 90% (rather than less than one-half in previous demonstrations of subsidized housing), and (e) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the families are likely to stay in the subsidized housing (compared to studies of vouchers, where over half of those who did move ended up moving again, typically back to poor neighborhoods). Our proposed data collection strategy will include baseline data collection at time of application for housing using a self-administered questionnaire to be completed by a single adult household member and augmented by information obtained from the housing application itself. Follow-up telephone interviews will take place 12-18 months after move-in, or equivalent for non-movers. A variety of information on current health status and health behaviors will be collected at baseline and follow-up to enable assessment of within-household change as well as average change between comparison groups at follow-up. Experimental analyses will be used to quantify the impact of moving to subsidized housing in a new neighborhood relative to moving to subsidized housing in the same neighborhood of residence at time of application. Exploratory analysis will compare two types of treatment: moves to mixed-income housing and exclusively low-income housing developments. Relationships among household, housing, and neighborhood features will be examined as potential outcomes as well as mediators of individual-level health outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Experimental research has shown that moving to new housing in particular kinds of neighborhoods may improve the life chances of poor families;however, previous research confounded housing- and neighborhood mobility and did not investigate the benefits of mixed-income housing developments. Our randomized experiment will track about 1,300 households who receive city-subsidized housing and about 1,700 matched households who do not receive housing over the first 12-18 months after move-in to assess changes in physical and mental health, and health behaviors. In addition, we will explore changes in physical, economic, and social environments that may mediate the relationship between residential context and health and well-being of low-income residents.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): From a public health perspective, moving to subsidized housing, to less poor neighborhoods, to housing developments with low rates of crime, or to more mixed income settings might reduce health disparities between children and families who have low income and those who do not. Children and young adolescents may be particularly influenced by housing given that they spend a large proportion of their time in their home neighborhood where the accessibility and quality of local amenities and institutions matter, and because they are influenced by their parents'responses to residential location. Receipt of in-place subsidized housing, the focus of our proposal, may help to improve the health and developmental trajectories of at-risk youth through multiple pathways. The proposed experimental research will utilize the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development's lottery system to identify treatment and control households that fit our study criteria. Group assignment will include families with children who move to a subsidized apartment in one of eleven newly constructed housing sites (treatment) and matched families who do not receive housing (control). This proposal's design improves and expands upon the design of earlier housing experiments in that it (a) compares the impact of moving to a new neighborhood versus staying in the same neighborhood among recipients of subsidized housing, (b) compares the impact of moving into mixed-income versus solely low- income buildings, (c) examines the impact of subsidized housing on near-poor families (rather than just families below the poverty threshold), (d) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the uptake of the offer is 90% (rather than less than one-half in Moving to Opportunity), and (e) examines the effect of subsidized housing where the families are likely to stay in the subsidized housing (in Moving to Opportunity, over half of those who did move ended up moving again, typically back to poor neighborhoods). Our proposed data collection strategy will include baseline data collection at time of application for housing, using a self-administered questionnaire to be completed by the primary caregiver and augmented by information obtained from the housing application itself. Follow-up assessments will include in-person interviews with the primary caregiver and detailed information on up to two co-resident children for each participating household. Our follow-up information on children will be collected by proxy for children under age eight and in-person with children ages eight to eighteen. Experimental analyses will be used to quantify the impact of moving to subsidized housing and additional exploratory analyses will be conducted to investigate the potential benefits of housing relative to neighborhoods and assess evidence of differential impacts among those receiving particular types of subsidized housing. Relationships among household, housing, and neighborhood features will be examined as potential outcomes as well as mediators of individual-level health outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The health of children and adults is influenced by the environments in which they live. Experimental research has shown that moving to new housing in particular kinds of neighborhoods may improve the life chances of poor families;however, previous research confounded housing- and neighborhood mobility and did not investigate the benefits of mixed-income housing developments. Our randomized experiment will address these shortcomings will NYC children and families who apply for in-place subsidized housing allocated through a housing lottery and test whether receipt of such housing improves the health and well-being of children and caregivers.