Kenneth A. Dodge - US grants

The aim of this project is to understand the development of social information processing in children and the relation between information processing and the development of social competence and peer relations in children. Toward this end, four programs of research are proposed. In the first program, a model of social informatin processing will be articulated. The role of negative affect in disrupting rational processing among socially incompetent, agressive children will be tested through experimental studies. The second program will examine the developmental origins of social information processing patterns through two longitudinal studies. The first study is a four-year investigation of 600 four-year-old children in which early socialization experiences will be related to the emergence of aggressive behavior and deficits in social information processing. Several theoretical models of the development of processing patterns will be evaluated. In the second study, the unfolding relation between biases in social information processing about peers and agressive interpersonal behavior will be examined by observing children during their initial play encounters and interviewing them repeatedly over a five-day period. The aim of the third program is to identify the peer perceptual bases and behavioral bases for social rejection among urban black children who are at social risk. Play groups of children will be formed and observed over a five day period. Children's perceptions of the bases for social rejection and children' processing of social information about peers' play will be evaluated through experimental interviews. The fourth program will identify factors in school-aged children which place them at risk for later maladjustment. This program is a continuation of a ten-year longitudinal study of 500 children. As a whole, these programs will contribute to our understanding of basic processes of children's social development, particularly the development of soical information processing patterns and peer relations. These programs will also lead to the design of interventions aimed at preventing the development of aggressive behavior problems.

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The aim of this RSA application is to enhance the PI's ability to develop models and to test hypotheses of the role of family and social-information-processing risk factors in the life-course development and prevention of disruptive disorders in children. Three related programs of research are proposed. Program One will examine the development of patterns of processing social information (e.g., hostile attributional biases, attention to relevant social cues, social problem solving skills, and efficacy beliefs) and their relation to behavioral maladjustment across development. A sample of 259 boys and girls (40% African-American, over half living in poverty) has been followed since early elementary school, with yearly assessments of processing patterns and adjustment. They will reach 12th grade in the next five years. The hypotheses are being tested that processing patterns will become stable over time and that they act as a proximal mechanism for disruptive behavior outcomes in adolescence. The aim of Program Two is to test the hypotheses that early family experiences (such as physical abuse and family disruptions) have an effect on disruptive behavioral development, and that this effect is mediated by the child's development of aggressogenic processing styles. 585 African-American and European-American boys and girls from three cities have been followed since preschool, with yearly assessments of family experiences, processing patterns, and disruptive behavior. Initial findings (Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, Science, 1990) are consistent with hypotheses. The aim of Program Three is to utilize the theory and empirical findings of the first two programs to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive 12 year-long intervention to prevent conduct disorder and serious disruptive behavior problems in high-risk first-grade children. Based on the screening of 9,600 boys and girls in four cities, children selected as at high risk are being assigned randomly to intervention (n=480) or control (n=480) conditions. Intervention will be directed toward the promotion of: (1) children's social-cognitive and academic skills; (2) parents' behavior management skills; (3) teachers' classroom efforts to promote children's skills; and (4) coordination between families and schools. Data analyses will focus on both process and outcome of intervention. The ultimate aim of this RSA is to enable the PI to synthesize these findings into a comprehensive, empirically-based theory of the development and prevention of conduct disorder and serious disruptive behavior.

This project consists of the continued implementation and evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent conduct disorder and social maladaptation in adolescence and adulthood. The hypothesis will be tested that such an intervention will lead to proximal improvements in child behavior and family ecology and, in turn, that these changes will lead to the long-term prevention of conduct disorder. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duke; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt; rural Pennsylvania/Penn State, and Seattle, WA/U. of Washington). Two successive cohorts of children have already been identified and will be followed over 12 years, and a third cohort will have been identified prior to the start of the next grant period. Kindergarten-age children who are at high-risk for conduct disorder are randomly assigned to an intervention (child n = 480) or control (child n = 480) group. The intervention attempts to promote children's compliant behavior, social cognitive skills, peer relations, and academic success; to promote parents' and teachers' skills in child behavioral management; to assist teachers in promoting children's social competence; and to develop coordination between families and schools. This multi-system program is designed to provide intensive intervention for 2-year periods at two developmentally important transition points (school entry and the transition to middle school), and to provide less intensive criterion- based intervention, classroom-based tutoring and home visiting during the middle elementary school years. The effects of intervention will be evaluated in multiple theoretically-based ways. In addition, representatively selected normative group of children in the control schools will be followed to provide normative comparisons for the intervention group, as well as to further investigate risk factors in the development of conduct disorder. Analyses of data comparing the first cohort of high-risk children and their families to the normative children and their families confirm the assumptions of the developmental model of conduct disorder on which this proposal is based. In the proposed 3-year grant period, intervention will focus on elementary school intervention and the developmental transition that occurs with entrance into middle school (for the first cohort). Further preventive intervention and evaluation is planned to complete the transition to middle school and early adolescence for all cohorts in a subsequent grant period.

The goal of this ongoing project is to understand the role of acquired patterns of processing social information in the development of behavioral competence and adjustment outcomes across childhood. Previous studies have found that adolescent outcomes can be predicted from early peer social preference and rejection, but the mechanisms of this relation are unknown. The proposed work is based on a model of social competence (Dodge, 1986) in which it is hypothesized that behavioral responding to a stimulus occurs as a function of a sequence of processing steps. These steps include encoding of cues, mental representation of those cues, response accessing, response evaluation, and response enactment. The model posits that patterns of processing at these steps are acquired through experience, they become stable over time, and they guide social behavior. In previous work, multi-item measures of processing patterns at each of these five steps were developed using videorecorded stimuli. Patterns were assessed within each of three major social domains (peer group entry, provocations by peers, and responding to an authority directive). These measures were administered to 259 first-,second-, and third-grade children and were found to yield internally consistent scores that are significantly related to measures of socially competent behavior within these domains and to social preference among peers (R's greater than .50). Five-year longitudinal follow-up of these subjects indicates that processing patterns remain stable over time. In the proposed project, the same subjects will be followed into adolescence (grades 6 through 12) in order to predict adjustment outcomes. New age-appropriate measures of processing patterns will be developed and administered to all subjects. Behavioral and adjustment outcomes will be assessed through ratings by selves, parents, peers, and teachers, and through archival school and juvenile court records. The hypotheses will be tested that processing patterns acquired in middle childhood become increasingly stable and differentiated across childhood. It is further hypothesized that these patterns act as personality-like characteristics that predict social behavior and maladjustment outcomes in adolescence. Finally, it is hypothesized that these processing patterns constitute the mechanism that accounts for the previously found predictability of adolescent outcomes from early peer social preference. This work will have important implications for the development of interventions with high-risk children.

This project consists of the continued implementation and evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent conduct disorder and social maladaptation in adolescence and adulthood. The hypothesis will be tested that such an intervention will lead to proximal improvements in child behavior and family ecology and, in turn, that these changes will lead to the long-term prevention of conduct disorder. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duke; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt; rural Pennsylvania/Penn State, and Seattle, WA/U. of Washington). Two successive cohorts of children have already been identified and will be followed over 12 years, and a third cohort will have been identified prior to the start of the next grant period. Kindergarten-age children who are at high-risk for conduct disorder are randomly assigned to an intervention (child n = 480) or control (child n = 480) group. The intervention attempts to promote children's compliant behavior, social cognitive skills, peer relations, and academic success; to promote parents' and teachers' skills in child behavioral management; to assist teachers in promoting children's social competence; and to develop coordination between families and schools. This multi-system program is designed to provide intensive intervention for 2-year periods at two developmentally important transition points (school entry and the transition to middle school), and to provide less intensive criterion- based intervention, classroom-based tutoring and home visiting during the middle elementary school years. The effects of intervention will be evaluated in multiple theoretically-based ways. In addition, representatively selected normative group of children in the control schools will be followed to provide normative comparisons for the intervention group, as well as to further investigate risk factors in the development of conduct disorder. Analyses of data comparing the first cohort of high-risk children and their families to the normative children and their families confirm the assumptions of the developmental model of conduct disorder on which this proposal is based. In the proposed 3-year grant period, intervention will focus on elementary school intervention and the developmental transition that occurs with entrance into middle school (for the first cohort). Further preventive intervention and evaluation is planned to complete the transition to middle school and early adolescence for all cohorts in a subsequent grant period.

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): This project consists of the continued implementation and evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent conduct problems in adolescence. This array of conduct problems which escalate sharply during the adolescent years includes delinquency, psychological disorder, substance abuse, school failure and dropout, and risky sexual practices. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duck; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt; rural Pennsylvania/Penn State; and Seattle, WA/Univ. of Washington). Three successive cohorts of children are involved in the project. The screening procedure of Fast Track identified high-risk children in kindergarten by their early conduct problems at home and school. These kindergarten-age children were randomly assigned by school to an intervention control group. Intervention began in the first grade with high-risk children, their adult caretakers, and their teachers. The elementary school phase of the prevention program addressed six areas or risk and protective factors derived from the developmental model: parenting, child problem-solving and emotional coping skills, peer relations, classroom atmosphere and curriculum, academic achievement and home-school relations. Project results thus far indicate that the intervention has effectively improved parenting practices and children's social-cognitive skills, peer relations, reading achievement, and problem behavior at home and school during the elementary school years. The primary aims of this renewal proposal are: 1) to take these three cohorts through the transition-to-adolescence phase of the project, with an intensive intervention in the sixth and seventh grades and then with monitoring and facilitation of their progress through the tenth grade year; and 2) to evaluate the long-term outcomes of this intervention through the high school years. The adolescent phase of intervention emphasizes four protective factors: parental monitoring and positive involvement, protection from deviant peer influences, positive identity and social-cognitive processes, and academic achievement and commitment to school. The proposed adolescent program includes curriculum-based parent and youth sessions (grades 5-7), and individualized prevention services through grade 10 (e.g., academic tutoring, vocational development support, mentoring, consultation with teachers, and home-visiting). Using multiple sources of information on the five categories of adolescent problem behavior, evaluations of outcome will focus on the intervention's success in reducing the latency to onset, frequency, severity, and chronicity of these problems. Comparisons will continue to be made to a control group and to a normative sample representative of the four communities. Universal prevention effects on the classmates of the high-risk participants will also be examined over time.

The goal of this project is to understand how chronic conduct problems develop from birth through adolescence. Through prospective inquiry, a comprehensive though not exhaustive model will be tested in which biological predispositions (e.g., temperament, heart rate reactivity), sociocultural contexts (e.g., poverty, violent neighborhood), and life experiences (e.g., physical abuse, peer social rejection) are posited as risk factors for conduct problem occurrence and growth. It is proposed that these risk factors combine additively to predict a large portion of variance in adolescent outcomes but also interactively through synergistic effects and moderation of one factor by another. It is hypothesized that life experiences mediate the effects of disposition and context (e.g., difficult temperament and poverty predispose a child to experience harsh parenting which then leads to conduct problem outcomes). Furthermore, this ecosymbiotic developmental model posits reciprocal influences among dispositions, contexts, and life experiences. It is hypothesized that risk factors lead to conduct problems through the development of social knowledge structures which guide cognitive-emotional processes which are proximal to antisocial actions. Developmental sensitivity suggests that different aspects of life experiences are crucial at different developmental eras. This project focuses specifically on adolescent processes, including deviant peer pressure, identity development, and romantic partner relationships. The participants are the 585 boys and girls (100 African-Americans) from three geographic sites and two cohorts of the Child Development Project. They have been followed annually since preschool (age 5) with low attrition, will be in grade 10 (or 9) at the beginning of the proposed project period, and will be followed until the 15th project year 18 months after high school graduation. Data collection will include interviews with parents, adolescents, and their romantic partners, parent-adolescent direct observation, teacher reports, psychiatric interviews, and archival records. Regressions, contrasts of structural equation models, and growth curve plotting will test hypotheses. Emphasis will be given to testing gender-specific and ethnic culture- specific models of antisocial development. The major contributions of this project will be the formulation and empirical testing of a comprehensive theory of how chronic conduct problems develop and indirect implications for universal preventions and preventive interventions for children at high risk for chronic adolescent conduct problems.

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): This project consists of the continued implementation and evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent conduct problems in adolescence. This array of conduct problems which escalate sharply during the adolescent years includes delinquency, psychological disorder, substance abuse, school failure and dropout, and risky sexual practices. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duck; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt; rural Pennsylvania/Penn State; and Seattle, WA/Univ. of Washington). Three successive cohorts of children are involved in the project. The screening procedure of Fast Track identified high-risk children in kindergarten by their early conduct problems at home and school. These kindergarten-age children were randomly assigned by school to an intervention control group. Intervention began in the first grade with high-risk children, their adult caretakers, and their teachers. The elementary school phase of the prevention program addressed six areas or risk and protective factors derived from the developmental model: parenting, child problem-solving and emotional coping skills, peer relations, classroom atmosphere and curriculum, academic achievement and home-school relations. Project results thus far indicate that the intervention has effectively improved parenting practices and children's social-cognitive skills, peer relations, reading achievement, and problem behavior at home and school during the elementary school years. The primary aims of this renewal proposal are: 1) to take these three cohorts through the transition-to-adolescence phase of the project, with an intensive intervention in the sixth and seventh grades and then with monitoring and facilitation of their progress through the tenth grade year; and 2) to evaluate the long-term outcomes of this intervention through the high school years. The adolescent phase of intervention emphasizes four protective factors: parental monitoring and positive involvement, protection from deviant peer influences, positive identity and social-cognitive processes, and academic achievement and commitment to school. The proposed adolescent program includes curriculum-based parent and youth sessions (grades 5-7), and individualized prevention services through grade 10 (e.g., academic tutoring, vocational development support, mentoring, consultation with teachers, and home-visiting). Using multiple sources of information on the five categories of adolescent problem behavior, evaluations of outcome will focus on the intervention's success in reducing the latency to onset, frequency, severity, and chronicity of these problems. Comparisons will continue to be made to a control group and to a normative sample representative of the four communities. Universal prevention effects on the classmates of the high-risk participants will also be examined over time.

DESCRIPTION: (Provided by Applicant): This competing-continuation application of a K05 Senior Scientist Award requests salary support for the PI to accomplish five goals. The first goal is to complete a program of research on how substance use, abuse, and disorder develop during adolescence. A biopsychosocial model that posits biological, sociocultural, parenting, peer, school, and cognitive-emotional factors that cumulate, interact, and transact across development guides this research. Hypotheses will be tested in an ongoing prospective study of 585 boys and girls who have been followed since age 4 and will turn 18 during the current year. Findings to date indicate that risk for early-onset substance use is enhanced by family history, adversity, and academic-social-conduct problems, whereas risk for adolescence-onset substance use derives especially from peer influences. The second goal is to complete a program of research on the prevention of substance use and related problem behaviors in adolescence. Based on the model and findings reported above, the PI has developed and implemented Fast Track, which is a comprehensive program for high-risk children (partially funded by NIDA). After screening over 9,000 kindergarteners, 891 were selected as high-risk and then randomly assigned to intervention or control groups. The intervention lasts 10 years and includes parent training, academic tutoring, social-cognitive skills training, peer coaching, mentoring, and vocational orientation. Findings after six years indicate that assignment to intervention leads to significantly less self-reported substance use (especially in girls), fewer associations with drug using peers, reduced aggressive behavior, fewer special education placements, and fewer psychiatric hospitalizations. Participants turn 14-16 years old this year and will be followed for the next five years. The third goal is to complete a program of public policy and services research on the costs, benefits, and utilization of health services, special education, and juvenile-justice system involvement by high-risk children. An economic study of Fast Track will be completed, along with analyses of the prediction of service utilization across time. The fourth goal is to enhance the PI?s research career development, particularly his ability to integrate basic developmental science with prevention program design and public policy analysis. He will become more learned in economic analysis and in the state of knowledge regarding adolescent substance use policy. The fifth goal is to enhance the PI?s ability to train new research scholars in a developmental approach to prevention and public policy toward adolescent substance use.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to understand the role that conduct disorder plays in the development of substance-use problems in young adulthood. To reach this goal, the proposed project will amplify two ongoing, federally funded, multi-site, longitudinal studies. The Child Development Project (CDP) is a prospective study of 585 youth (50% female; 19% minority) from three sites, who have been followed since age four years and are now 19 years old (with 84% retention of original sample). The Fast Track (FT) Project is a prevention experiment in which 892 early-starting conduct-problem youth (31% female; 55% minority) from four sites were identified in first grade and randomly assigned to receive a ten-year intervention or not and have been followed through age 18 (83% retention of sample). Findings indicate that youth assigned to the FT intervention display 40% fewer diagnoses of conduct disorder in high school than controls. FT also includes a normative-representative sample of 387 youth (50% female; 49% minority) who are being followed to study how conduct disorder develops. To date, substance use in both the CDP and FT has been measured but not in depth. For both studies, new data collection for the proposed project will include detailed measurement of participants' use, dependence, and abuse of illicit substances, alcohol, and tobacco in early adulthood. Three aims will be addressed. The first aim is to understand how early conduct disorder leads to substance-use problems. A transactional-developmental model will be tested that posits risk and protective factors in the domains of child behavior, socio-cultural contexts, parenting, peer relations, schooling, and social cognitions. Findings that emerge from the CDP will be replicated with the FT normative sample. The second aim is to understand resilience to substance-use development among conduct-problem children. The FT high-risk control group, known to be at elevated risk for substance use, will be examined to identify protective factors that account for resilience to substance use. The hypothesis will be tested that professional services moderate risk; specifically, services that aggregate deviant children in groups will enhance risk, whereas individual services that focus on family process will decrease risk. The third aim is to test the efficacy of the FT intervention in preventing substance-use problems in early adulthood and the role of reduced conduct disorder as a mediator of this effect.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Because substance use in adolescence is a social event, we propose the Duke-Carolina Trans-Disciplinary Prevention Research Center to address the pervasive influence of peers on adolescent drug-use behavior. Emergent findings suggest that youth proliferate drug-use attitudes and behavior in contexts with deviant peers and that these deviant influences play a major role in adolescent drug use. In spite of these findings, however, government interventions often aggregate deviant peers without adequate supervision to avoid deviant peer contagion (e.g., alternative schools, training schools, special classrooms, boot camps), and prevention curricula do not sufficiently take into account the pervasiveness of peer influences. The proposed Center will be co-led by Kenneth Dodge, a NIDA-supported Senior Scientist Award recipient and developmental psychopathologist, and Philip Costanzo, a leading social psychologist of peer influences. The Center will bring together scholars at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hilt from the disciplines of economics, psychology, sociology, neuropharmacology, public policy, statistics, psychiatric epidemiology, and health behavior in order to form trans-disciplinary working groups that will complete programs of research. The 34 members will conduct basic science studies and will translate that knowledge into novel preventive interventions at each of three levels of peer influence, which will constitute Programs of Research: 1) cognitive and emotional processes that operate intrapersonally but are influenced by peers; 2) the social psychology of interpersonal peer interaction in dyads and small groups; and 3) institutional peer effects at a macro-level. Each of these Programs will be supported by three Cores, for Administration, Data, and Practice. The Administrative Core will nurture an intellectual climate through leadership, seminars, postdoctoral training, and budget management. The Data Core will help researchers locate their research in community, school, and policy settings; process data in a centralized data center; and provide expert statistical consultation in quantitative methods of analyzing change. The Practice Core will bring practitioners and policy makers into ongoing interaction with researchers to translate basic science into novel prevention programs for implementation and evaluation. The Center will be governed by an Executive Committee of the Directors of the three Programs of Research and the three Cores. External Scientific and Practice Advisory Boards will provide essential guidance. The Center will be evaluated annually for implementation and impact through logs of activities, surveys of members, compilation of published products, and external reviews.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is to complete the evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent serious antisocial behavior and related adolescent problems. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duke University; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt University; rural Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania State University; and Seattle, WA/University of Washington). The screening procedure of Fast Track identified three successive cohorts of high-risk children in kindergarten by their early conduct problems at home and school. These children were randomly assigned by school to an intervention or control group. Intervention began in first grade with high-risk children, their adult caretakers, and their teachers based on a developmental model that specified six areas of risk and protective factors: parenting, child problem-solving and emotional coping skills, peer relations, classroom atmosphere, academic achievement, and home-school relations. It was continued in adolescence with an emphasis on protection from deviant peer influence; promoting positive identity, goals, and aspirations; and academic and vocational skill development. Analyses indicate the intervention has led to significant improvements in the hypothesized risk and protective factors and reductions in conduct problem behavior over the elementary school years. The primary aims of this proposal are: 1) to complete the assessments in the last 2 years of high school and the 2 years immediately after high school in order to evaluate intervention effects on mental health, crime, substance abuse, education and employment, and the use of community services; 2) to determine whether characteristics of the participant sample moderated the effects of the intervention; 3) to understand factors that mediate successful preventive intervention; 4) to identify factors influencing participation and the relation between dosage and outcome; 5) to continue to test the developmental model of early and late-starting conduct problems with the normative and high-risk samples; 6) to continue to develop innovative methods for analyzing data from prevention trials; and 7) to provide data for an economic study of the impact of Fast Track on professional service utilization. The data collection plan calls for completion of annual parent and youth assessments at the end of 11th (cohort 3) and 12th grades (cohorts 2 and 3); a phone interview 1 year after the end of high school; and a face-to-face interview at age 20 that will provide a final assessment of mental health status, conduct problem behavior, substance use, educational progress, and employment status at the end of the teenage years (all cohorts).

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application for a competing continuation of the Child Development Project (CDP) aims to test an empirical model of how chronic antisocial behavior develops in a longitudinal study of 585 boys and girls who have been followed annually since preschool and who will turn age 26 during the next five years. The CDP has been federally funded continuously since 1987 with cumulative attrition of less than I percent per year. The sample is diverse in background (17% African-American; 26% b0m in lowest SES groups; 3 geographic sites of Nashville, TN; Knoxville, TN; and Bloomington, IN) and varied in outcomes at the current age of 21 (36% treated for psychiatric disorders; 21% arrested; 37% suspended from school). 57 CDP publications support a transactional systems model of antisocial development that integrates biological and sociocultural context factors, child and adolescent life events, and acquired cognitive-emotional response patterns as mediators. Discoveries from the CDP include the first prospective demonstration that long-term adverse outcomes accrue from early physical maltreatment in a community sample and that social information processing patterns mediate these effects. Data will be collected annually for the next five years from participants, peers, romantic partners, offspring, observers, and archival records, toward the goal of assessing participants' level of participation, antisocial behavior, and competent prosocial behavior in relationships with other adults (peers, parents, authorities), romantic partners, and offspring. Major innovative aims are to: 1) test the interpersonal relationship domain-specificity of antisocial behavior and cognitive-emotional processes in young adulthood; 2) identify predictors of antisocial behavior in these three domains and to test hypotheses of an additive model, an interactive model, a life-experiences mediational model, a reciprocal-influence model, and a domain-specific model; 3) test the hypothesis that acquired, domain-specific social information-processing patterns mediate the effect of life experiences on antisocial outcomes; 4) test the generalizability of models across gender, ethnic, and cultural groups; 5) test the intergenerational transmission of behavior and cognitive-emotional processes; and 6) contribute to prevention practice and public policy by analyzing data in a way that addresses policy questions. This research will contribute both to basic theories of antisocial development and to prevention science and public policy.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This revised competing continuation application of a K05 Senior Scientist Award requests salary support for the PI to contribute to the societal prevention of serious problem outcomes, including substance abuse, behaviors that place one at risk for HIV/AIDS, and child abuse, in two related populations: multi-problem adolescents and young high-risk mothers. The PI's strategy for each population is an integrated three-part program of research in translation science that corresponds to the first three specific aims. The first aim is to understand how chronic problem behaviors develop in these two populations. Two ongoing longitudinal studies will be completed during this award: 1) the Child Development Project of 585 boys and girls who have been followed since age 4 and will turn 29 during the award; and 2) Project MOM, a study of 500 women being followed from mid-pregnancy through the infant's first three years of life. Findings from both studies indicate high comorbidity of substance use, sexual behaviors that place one at risk of HIV/AIDS, and conduct disorder/antisocial behavior. The second aim is to translate findings from basic science into tests of ongoing prevention programs for these two populations: 1) The Fast Track randomized trial of 891 kindergarteners at risk for adolescent problem behaviors tests a 10-year comprehensive intervention that includes parent training, social-cognitive skills training, and peer coaching. Findings indicate that assignment to intervention prevents 75% of diagnosed adolescent conduct disorder in the highest-risk subgroup; and 2) The Durham Family Initiative (DFI) is an attempt to lower the county-wide incidence of child abuse through screening, triage, and intervention with pregnant women. Findings thus far indicate a 41% reduction in official child abuse, contrasted with 12% for 5 control counties. The third aim is to learn how to translate efficacious prevention models into community-wide change. Adolescent deviance will be addressed through economic evaluation of Fast Track; and maternal substance abuse, HIV/AIDS risk, and child abuse will be addressed through evaluation of a state-wide Multiple Response System. The fourth aim is to integrate studies of these populations in order to understand comorbidity of substance use, behaviors that place one at risk for HIV/AIDS, and conduct disorder. Developmental studies will examine the temporal relations among these problems over time, and intervention trials will test the hypothesis that change in one problem leads to changes in other problems. The fifth aim is to enhance the Pi's ability to provide research mentorship, through directorship of research centers and training of new scholars in a translation science approach to substance use and HIV/AIDS prevention. The sixth aim is to enhance the Pi's research skills and knowledge in HIV/AIDS and substance abuse, especially in economic analysis and public policy. This award will contribute to the prevention of multi-problem outcomes.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this competing continuation project is to test models of the development and prevention of three inter-related antisocial problems in young adulthood: violence, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior. Joint consideration of these three diverse problem domains holds promise because of the "syndemic" of parallel epidemics, comorbidity, similar epidemiology, and the possibility that isolated prevention efforts fail precisely because of the failure to consider joint effects. The investigators will test three major hypotheses: 1) these problems are comorbid across development, with early conduct problems leading to each adult outcome;2) a comorbid antisocial behavior pattern develops as a dynamic cascade, in which early risk factors dispose a child to later risk factors, which lead to problem outcomes. The model posits gene-environment interactions that are mediated through acquired social information-processing patterns. Domain-specific outcomes also develop through specific affordance experiences;and 3) random assignment to preventive intervention will reduce the probability of each of antisocial outcome in adulthood, with moderation by genetic and early-life factors and mediation by intervention effects on early conduct problems and social-cognitive patterns. The samples come from two independent, ongoing prospective studies of conduct disorder, the Child Development Project (CDP) and Fast Track (FT). The CDP has followed a community sample of 585 preschool males and females who are now 26 years old, with high (90 percent) retention after 22 years. The FT Project is a multi-site randomized clinical trial, in which 891 early-starting, conduct-problem youth (31 percent girls;51 percent African-American) were assigned in kindergarten to receive (or not) a 10-year comprehensive intervention to prevent conduct disorder and have been followed through age 24 with high (83 percent) retention of participants. In the proposed project, identical measures of violence, substance-use problems, and risky sexual behaviors will be assessed in the CDP through age 31 and in FT through age 29. Growth analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation modeling will test hypotheses. Relevance to public health: This project will contribute to the discovery of ways to prevent young adult antisocial problems, including violence, substance abuse, and risky sexual behaviors. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project will increase our understanding of how problems of violence, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior develop across the lifespan and relate to each other. It will test the efficacy of a long-term intervention to prevent these problems in young adulthood.

Abstract The aim of this randomized controlled trial (RCT) competing continuation is to evaluate the long-term population impact and mechanisms of Family Connects (FC), brief universal nurse home-visiting program designed to prevent child maltreatment in an entire community population. Between July 1, 2009, and December 31, 2010, every infant born in Durham on an even birth date (n=2,329 births) was assigned to receive the FC Program, and all infants born on an odd birth date (n=2,450 births) received services-as-usual. Evaluation of implementation indicated high penetration (80.0% of all births consented to participate), high fidelity to the model (84% adherence), and high reliability of scoring risk factors (?=0.69). Intent-to-treat impact evaluation with a representative random sample from intervention (n=269) and control (n=280) birth dates indicated that families randomly assigned to FC accessed more community resources and exhibited less anxiety and better parenting behavior. Hospital records indicated FC families had fewer emergency medical care visits and overnights in the hospital through age 24 months, and child protective service records indicated 39% lower rates of investigations for child maltreatment through age 60 months. The proposed study will continue to follow families participating in the existing impact evaluation study from child ages 9 to 12 years. Administrative records will evaluate impact of random assignment to FC on child maltreatment cases, emergency room maltreatment-related injuries, and education outcomes. In-home and telephone interviews with parents and children, as well as blinded observations, will assess parental functioning and child well- being. Teacher surveys will assess child academic performance and social-emotional adjustment. Data analyses will test five hypotheses: 1) Random assignment to the FC program (that is, being born on an even birth date) will be associated with lower rates of child maltreatment and emergency department utilization, better academic outcomes, better parental functioning, and better child well-being than assignment as control; 2) FC will produce a positive benefit-cost ratio, as measured by outcomes in health, mental health, social, and education services received; 3) Intervention effect sizes will be larger for higher-risk groups; 4) Community resource use and enhanced family functioning will mediate the positive impact of FC on outcomes; and 5) Developmental processes in dysfunctional parenting and child behavior among the control group will conform to the model guiding the program. This proposal offers an urgent, time-constrained opportunity to evaluate the long-term population impact and mechanisms of this innovative universal home-visiting program. The project will contribute to public health by evaluating the long-term impact and mechanisms of a program that aims to lower the population rate of child maltreatment in a cost-effective way and by testing models of the development of maltreatment, dysfunctional parenting, and child behavior and well-being.

This proposal intends to develop a national community of researchers that utilizes large scale, longitudinal educational databases that are linked across the spectrum of early childhood to college, workplace and other social sets of data. The research collaborative includes an initial group of scholars in education research, education policy, anthropology, economics, psychology and social sciences from Northwestern and Duke University. These researchers are actively recruiting researchers and educational stakeholders from across the country, who are working with different educational and other data sets to improve capacity to link data together in the expanded data repositories that have been funded by the federal government.

The researchers are identifying best practices in the use of data and develop prototypes of their use. Starting from the Florida and North Carolina longitudinal data sets, the researchers are developing prototypes of how these data can be combined to answer pressing educational and social science questions that have heretofore been unable to be addressed. These prototypes are being developed collaboratively across the multiple institutions who are participating in the national community, with Northwestern and Duke serving as the conceptual hubs of the project. The prototypes inform the two national level meetings at which scholars and practitioners to share findings and stimulate the development of such research in other states.

The expansion of large scale longitudinal data in education and social sciences has resulted in a demand for new ways to link together data that has typically remained in silos across various state agencies. By developing prototypes of how these data sets should be linked, this research and development is expanding the nature of the questions that the data can inform. These questions include important policy and practice concerns that have been problematic in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

The C-StARR Data Core is an evolving adaptation of data-related support within the Duke Center based on new opportunities and emerging research questions. The Center was initially funded in 2003 as a NIDA P20 center. The Data Core, originally directed by Dr. Hoyle, provided support to research programs in the collection, analysis, and archiving of data. In 2008, the Center was renewed as a P30 cores-only center, shifting the focus of the Core to support of ongoing projects in the research base and new pilot studies. This shift was reflected in the change of the name to Methodology and Statistics Core. Hoyle directs this core, which focuses on the development and dissemination of methods and strategies for addressing the challenges associated with longitudinal, multilevel analyses of self-regulation and substance abuse through consultation and collaboration with Center investigators. In this application to transition to a NIDA P30 Core Center of Excellence, we return to the name Data Core to reflect the addition of a, focus on existing large, complex, longitudinal data sets that include variables that range from genetics to school administrative data. We will offer support for data collection and analysis using the large NC education data base as well as supplementing and integrating existing data sets. This new emphasis is consistent with broader investments in data infrastructure such as the NSF-NIH BIGDATA initiative, which supports the development and evaluation of tools that take advantage of available collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science, biomedical research, and engineering. As reflected in our aims, progress, and plans, the Data Core will contribute to this interagency goal while serving the needs of ongoing and pilot projects in the Center.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Scientific Meetings for Advancing Economic Analyses of Substance Abuse Prevention. NIH-funded research over the last 25 years has established that early intervention can substantially alter maladaptive developmental trajectories that lead to substance abuse and addiction. These discoveries, in turn, have led to the creation of numerous evidence-based preventive interventions (EBPI) to address the major public health problem of substance abuse. Yet, many such interventions 'sit on the shelf' as communities struggle to justify investing in the infrastructure and capacity needed for high-quality prevention programming. Consequently, the field now stands on the cusp of substantially improving how society addresses substance abuse-if communities can first be convinced that EBPIs represent a sound local investment. Until robust evidence demonstrates that allocating scarce resources to these programs is an efficient use of public monies-in that the program's benefits outweigh their costs--developmentally-based prevention efforts will continue to play a limited role in publi health. Finding such evidence will require high-quality economic evaluations of prevention efforts. To carry out such evaluations successfully, prevention scientists will need to augment current research capacity by embracing novel economic methods and perspectives as well as building sustainable collaborations with economists and policy analysts. We propose to use the R13 'Support for Conferences and Scientific Meetings' mechanism (PA-12-212) to hold a series of three meetings to convene core groups of prevention scientists, and economists to advance economic evaluations of substance abuse prevention. Key experts will be brought together to (1) cultivate a sustainable interdisciplinary research team, (2) identify analytic approaches for strengthening cost and benefit estimates, and (3) provide guidance around employing benefit-cost analyses to build efficient prevention efforts.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although prevention scientists have documented effective interventions to prevent adult substance abuse, antisocial behavior, and risky sexual behavior, these interventions have not been applied to optimize return on investment and thus have not yet been fully embraced by communities. This application proposes to map the relations between early risk profiles (and preventive intervention) and adult health and financial outcomes. Past studies have estimated these relations with regression coefficients that satisfy scholars but provide insufficient information to enable practitioners and policy makers to target children for intervention by age and risk profile. The proposed studies will identify the government service outcomes and financial costs associated with various risk profiles by age and the likely return on investment for the Fast Track intervention, which has been documented to prevent antisocial behavior and substance use problems. We propose interviews and administrative data collection at ages 30-34 with participants in each of two ongoing longitudinal studies that have followed children with detailed measurement of risk factors from kindergarten into adulthood, the Child Development Project (n=585, retention=90%) and the Fast Track randomized controlled trial (n=1199, retention=81%). We will pursue three aims: 1) Model the relation between early risk and adult health outcomes at different levels, qualities, and ages of risk, to identify optimal intervention timing and targets; 2) Map the relation between risk profile and adult service utilization and ultimate public costs in adulthood, to monetize the possible returns on prevention investment; and 3) Evaluate the impact of the Fast Track intervention on adult health and financial outcomes, by subgroups. The findings will provide a template for an emerging Science of Investing in Children to improve public health and protect public resources.

PROJECT SUMMARY The 15 million children in the United States who live in families below the poverty line are at risk for serious health problems ranging from chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes to mental health problems such as depression and substance use disorders. Many childhood interventions target low-income and high-risk children, with evidence that some early interventions improve adult health and wellbeing. However, little is known about whether, and how, the benefits of childhood interventions get transmitted across generations. This study asks whether children who benefit from early interventions grow up to become better parents and, subsequently, have children who experience fewer health problems, educational challenges, and emotional problems. We bring together two longstanding, ongoing, prospective intervention studies that follow panels of children into adulthood. Published findings show that each intervention has positive impact on a child?s adjustment, but it is not known whether this impact transfers to the next generation. The first is a quasi-experiment in which a positive income shock due to a casino opening resulted in an unearned cash transfer to American Indian children?s families. These families had already been participating in the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS), an accelerated longitudinal cohort study now entering its fourth decade, with detailed measures available pre-intervention, post-intervention, and into adulthood. The second is the Fast Track (FT) Prevention Randomized Controlled Trial that randomly assigned 891 kindergarten children at risk for serious behavior problems to intervention and control conditions. Published findings indicate positive impact at least through age 26. Participants from both studies are now in their mid-30s and are currently completing or preparing for another wave of assessments with high rates of study retention. We will collect identical measures of risks to parenting, parenting environments, and parenting behaviors and information on the over 5000 offspring of these study members via a harmonized parent and offspring survey, a low-cost daily virtual assessment of parenting and child wellbeing, and high quality educational and birth records. We test whether the positive income shock, or separately, random assignment to the FT intervention in childhood, improves future parenting and, subsequently, offspring adjustment. For GSMS, we conduct an innovative population-wide extension to include all children aged 8 to 18 living in the counties where the income shock occurred. We test hypotheses about which subgroups (e.g., highest risk, females, those showing maximal initial impact) are most likely to likely to pass on benefits of the intervention to their own children, and which mechanisms mediate intervention impact. Our findings will inform prevention science by testing whether, for whom, and how, the effects of human capital interventions are transmitted across generations. Our findings speak directly to the costs and benefits of contemporary public policy as both interventions reflect features of policies and programs that currently serve millions of high-risk children and families in the United States.

ABSTRACT - Dissemination and Outreach Core The Dissemination and Outreach Core will connect the Duke Autism Center of Excellence to the broader community by engaging individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families, practitioners, scientists, and policymakers regarding important problems they face and helping Duke ACE Center investigators use this knowledge to design studies, interpret findings, and disseminate information to these stakeholders. The Core will nurture the career development of junior and mid-career investigators who wish to contribute to the science of ASD and also encourage a scientific perspective on the process and effectiveness of dissemination. The Core will leverage existing and develop new partnerships with organizations within and external to Duke University whose efforts are well-aligned with the goals of this Core. External partners include the Autism Society of North Carolina, Autism Speaks, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Child Care Services Association, and the Latino Educational Achievement Partnership. Within Duke, organizations include the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development, Duke ADHD Program, Center for Child and Family Policy, Community Connections and Collaboration Core of the Clinical and Translational Science Award, and Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. In partnership with these organizations and key community stakeholders, the Core will promote communication between the Center and the broader community to ensure that scientific findings from the Duke ACE Center have their greatest possible impact on individuals with ASD and their families in real world settings. Aims of this Core are to (1) translate and disseminate findings to the community via dissemination materials, community informational events, talks in the community, and public awareness activities. The Core will also hold stakeholder training programs that build community members' expertise and knowledge about research. The Core will use traditional and social media outlets, build a Center website, provide scientific lectures, and disseminate scientific briefings for policy leaders; (2) promote two-way communication between investigators and the community of individuals affected by autism by hosting community engagement events, focus groups, and community and research focused tours designed to facilitate discussions between research and community stakeholders, with an emphasis on input from underrepresented groups; (3) encourage and support junior and established researchers new to the field of ASD, particularly those from underrepresented groups, via a wide range of activities and innovative programs, including involvement in ACE Center research, interdisciplinary research teams offered at Duke, summer camps for high school students, and targeted programs for those from under-represented backgrounds; and (4) encourage Center investigators to use research findings and theory on the process and effectiveness of dissemination of scientific findings. Metrics will be collected to evaluate each activity to assess its effectiveness in promoting dissemination and outreach.

ABSTRACT This project seeks to understand whether, for whom, and how the effects of successful early childhood school readiness interventions are sustained across a child?s development. Past seemingly contradictory findings about so-called fadeout motivate this project. Our first aim will assess the long-run effects of two early childhood interventions implemented at scale in North Carolina. We will estimate the treatment impacts of the More at Four (MF) pre-kindergarten (pre-k) intervention program and the Smart Start (SS) Initiative on key health, education, and well-being outcomes during adolescence (e.g., high school graduation, teen pregnancy). MF is a high-quality pre-k program for low-income children, measured at the individual level by enrollment and at the community level as funding allocations per capita by the state to each of 100 counties in each of 15 years. This funding was allocated to over one million children. Gradual rollout of MF and quasi-random variations led to sizeable differences in funding across years and counties that are independent of child characteristics. SS provides funding to counties to improve quality and access to child care, health screenings, and other services for all children from birth to age 5. SS was implemented using the same gradual rollout and funding formula used for MF, but in different years, providing independent random variation in program access. As we test long-run impact, we will also test whether effect sizes vary as a function of family income, ethnicity, dual-language learning status, and other characteristics. Our second aim will test the hypothesis that the impact effect size varies with the school environment that a child enters, called the Sustaining Environment hypothesis. We hypothesize that children who experience a school readiness intervention and are then placed into a sustaining environment (e.g., classroom with higher proportion of peers who are ready to learn or have experienced the early intervention, classroom teacher who has been trained to promote learning) will have longer-lasting effects (a moderation effect). The third aim is to test the Sustaining Environment hypothesis through experimental manipulation in the Building Blocks (BB) mathematics intervention study. The BB pre-k math curriculum focuses on numeracy and geometric/spatial reasoning. In 2005, 42 schools in Boston and Buffalo with 1,375 children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) BB; (2) BB plus elementary school teacher training to support persistence of early impact; or (3) control (pre-k as usual). We will add measures of the child's subsequent peer, classroom, and school environments, as well as adolescent outcomes, to test the hypothesis that the BB program has longer-lasting effects when implemented with a subsequent sustaining environment. The final aim is to integrate findings across studies to reach generalizable conclusions about the circumstances in which early intervention has impacts that persist or fade across development, for both development scientists and education policy makers.

The Contextual Data Acquisition and Analysis Core, one of two research support cores in the Center for the Study of Adolescent Risk and Resilience (C-StARR), will support funded projects by providing access to the technology and expertise needed to enhance and extend the collection, management, and analysis of data relevant to the relation between self-regulation and substance use during adolescence and early adulthood. Core staff will support the work of Center-affiliated scholars by 1) encouraging and supporting the acquisition of data characterizing the physical, social, and cyber contexts that shape adolescents? behavior; 2) offering access to the population and records of public school students in North Carolina; 3) providing the data collection and data management support required for innovative, high-impact projects; 4) providing access to expertise and training in novel approaches to modeling and analyzing complex data; and 5) collaborating on projects that result in high-impact manuscripts and presentations and successful grant applications. The Core will be led by Drs. Kenneth Dodge and Candice Odgers, senior scientists with distinguished records of scholarship on the role of contextual factors in the development of substance abuse and other maladaptive behaviors. A Core Advisory Group will provide input on emerging strategies for collecting, managing, and analyzing data and, as needed, connect Core staff with faculty and professional-staff experts in these areas. Longstanding partnerships with the Social Science Research Institute and the North Carolina Education Research Data Center will allow Core staff to connect Center-affiliated scholars to additional sources of data and research support.