Keith F. Widaman - US grants

This is a Shannon Award providing partial support for research projects that fall short of the assigned institute's funding range but are in the margin of excellence. The Shannon award is intended to provide support to test the feasibility of the approach; develop further tests and refine research techniques; perform secondary analysis of availability data sets; or conduct discrete projects that can demonstrate the PI's research capabilities or lend additional weight to an already meritorious application. Further scientific data for the CRISP System are unavailable at this time.

This project's goal is to examine how reader and text characteristics combine to influence the comprehension of science texts. The study will make use of recent advances in psychometrics on hierarchical linear models in order to assess the predictive values of a large number of linguistic properties, reader characteristics, and the structure of those factors. Through analyses of individual differences in readers and analyses of text difficulty, the researchers hope to be able to make progress toward using computer systems to customized complex texts to individual readers. This, they hope, would make such texts generally readable to a heterogeneous group of readers.

The intellectual merit of the project is in the multidisciplinary approach that the researchers adopt in order to address problems in reading comprehension. Bringing psychometric tools into contact with sentence processing paradigms from cognitive science has the potential to yield new findings of interest to the scientific community.

The broader impact of the study if successful is that more people would be able to read and understand science. The development of diagnostic test to measure the required reading skills for complex texts would also be beneficial.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests a second 5 years of support for a continuing study of over 650 families and children of Mexican origin. During the first 5 years of support, two cohorts of families and children were recruited and followed from 5th through 7th or 8th grades. During the next 5 years, we will continue to follow these families and children as they navigate the adolescent years, a time of high risk for involvement with licit and illicit substances. The research will address four important issues related to the initiation and escalation of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use. First, the investigation will examine risk for and resilience to ATOD use in a critically important ethnic group in the United States, children of Mexican origin. Mexican Americans living in California will soon become the most populous ethnic group in the state, consistent with national trends for Latinos. Second, the investigation will examine developmental pathways leading to the initiation and escalation of ATOD use from late childhood through adolescence. A developmental approach is generally considered the best strategy for informing the creation of effective intervention programs that can prevent the early initiation of ATOD use, when it is most likely to have severe long-term consequences. Third, the investigation will examine family influences on the initiation and escalation of ATOD use, also considered crucial for early prevention. Finally, the investigation will employ state-of-the-art research methods for studying family influences on the development of ATOD use. Hypotheses will be derived from the family stress model, which proposes that acculturation processes, minority experiences, economic hardship, and neighborhood and school risks will affect parent-parent, parent-child, and sibling and peer relationships. These relationships, in turn, are expected to influence the initiation and escalation of ATOD use and related adjustment problems such as risky sexual behaviors, which increase long-term risk for HIV/AIDs and other STDs. The family stress model also proposes that a set of cultural (e.g., respect, familism), personal (e.g., ethnic identity, self-control), and social (e.g., effective family problem solving) resources will promote resilience to the hypothesized risk factors. The major test of these hypotheses will come during the next 5 years when the children enter adolescence and risk for ATOD use increases dramatically. An important goal of this next phase of the research will be to evaluate how risk factors, protective mechanisms, and ATOD use interrelate in a dynamic manner across the adolescent years. Results of the study are expected to inform the development of more effective and culturally sensitive early prevention programs for an important and understudied population. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research aims to understand (a) the developmental pathways that increase risk for drug use and other adjustment problems in Mexican origin youth living in California and (b) the social, cultural, and personal characteristics that promote resilience to such risks. Knowledge acquired from the project will improve intervention programs intended to promote resilience and prevent the initiation and escalation of drug use in this population.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests a second 5 years of support for a continuing study of over 650 families and children of Mexican origin. During the first 5 years of support, two cohorts of families and children were recruited and followed from 5th through 7th or 8th grades. During the next 5 years, we will continue to follow these families and children as they navigate the adolescent years, a time of high risk for involvement with licit and illicit substances. The research will address four important issues related to the initiation and escalation of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use. First, the investigation will examine risk for and resilience to ATOD use in a critically important ethnic group in the United States, children of Mexican origin. Mexican Americans living in California will soon become the most populous ethnic group in the state, consistent with national trends for Latinos. Second, the investigation will examine developmental pathways leading to the initiation and escalation of ATOD use from late childhood through adolescence. A developmental approach is generally considered the best strategy for informing the creation of effective intervention programs that can prevent the early initiation of ATOD use, when it is most likely to have severe long-term consequences. Third, the investigation will examine family influences on the initiation and escalation of ATOD use, also considered crucial for early prevention. Finally, the investigation will employ state-of-the-art research methods for studying family influences on the development of ATOD use. Hypotheses will be derived from the family stress model, which proposes that acculturation processes, minority experiences, economic hardship, and neighborhood and school risks will affect parent-parent, parent-child, and sibling and peer relationships. These relationships, in turn, are expected to influence the initiation and escalation of ATOD use and related adjustment problems such as risky sexual behaviors, which increase long-term risk for HIV/AIDs and other STDs. The family stress model also proposes that a set of cultural (e.g., respect, familism), personal (e.g., ethnic identity, self-control), and social (e.g., effective family problem solving) resources will promote resilience to the hypothesized risk factors. The major test of these hypotheses will come during the next 5 years when the children enter adolescence and risk for ATOD use increases dramatically. An important goal of this next phase of the research will be to evaluate how risk factors, protective mechanisms, and ATOD use interrelate in a dynamic manner across the adolescent years. Results of the study are expected to inform the development of more effective and culturally sensitive early prevention programs for an important and understudied population. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research aims to understand (a) the developmental pathways that increase risk for drug use and other adjustment problems in Mexican origin youth living in California and (b) the social, cultural, and personal characteristics that promote resilience to such risks. Knowledge acquired from the project will improve intervention programs intended to promote resilience and prevent the initiation and escalation of drug use in this population.