J Lawrence (Larry) Aber - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study proposes to examine longitudinally the dynamic patterns of comorbidity between depression and conduct disorder throughout middle childhood and adolescence. The study capitalizes on an existing unique data set by proposing a follow-up of an evaluation, conducted by the PI, of one of the largest school-based violence prevention programs in the country, the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP). The RCCP curriculum targeted social-cognitive and interpersonal processes known to predict later antisocial behavior and psychopathology; the 1994-1996 RCCP evaluation included assessments of children's depressive symptoms, conduct disordered behaviors, ineffective social-cognitive processes, aggressive tendencies, and socially competent behavior. Aim I of the proposed study is to characterize the dynamic nature of comorbidity between depression and conduct disorder across middle childhood and into adolescence. Aim II is to examine whether comorbidity status in middle childhood as well as developmental trajectories of depression, conduct disorder, social-cognitive processes, and competence predict key outcomes in adolescence. Outcomes of academic achievement will be obtained from New York City Board of Education records for the full sample of 2260 students who completed reports of depression and conduct disorder in the original study; of this sample, 48 percent are female, 38 percent are Hispanic, 42 percent are Black, and 15 percent are White. Outcomes of depression, conduct disorder/delinquency, substance use, social-cognitive processes, and social-emotional competence will be assessed through individual interviews with a selected subsample of the original RCCP sample (N = 600), half of which will be strategically selected based on their initial comorbidity status (100 high comorbid, 100 high depression only, 100 high conduct disorder only) and half of which will be non-disordered children matched on demographic characteristics. The proposed study will provide a greater understanding of the role dynamic comorbidity in middle childhood in predicting adolescents' psychological and social adjustment as well as an evaluation of the effectiveness of a universal intervention in both preventing and mitigating the occurrence of comorbidity.

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 investigator): Mounting research now clearly establishes that socioeconomic disadvantage has a profound, negative impact on young children's healthy development and school readiness. Most research to date has focused on income-based poverty and has neglected other crucial features of family socioeconomic well-being, including a family's experience of financial hardship, levels of wealth and debts, and levels of human capital. The present study improves upon existing literature by: (1) capitalizing on the strengths of a large, nationally representative, and longitudinal data set (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort) with supplements from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; (2) describing the dynamic nature of dual components of family socioeconomic disadvantage, namely family income and family financial hardship; and (3) testing competing hypotheses about why and how family income and financial hardship affects children's outcomes. Drawing from our research team's diverse backgrounds in developmental psychology, sociology, economics, and empirical policy analysis, we propose to address the following set of aims: Aim I: To characterize the parameters and patterns of family income trajectories in a nationally representative sample over the period of children's transitions from Kindergarten through 1st 3rd and 5th grades. Aim II: To test a variety of alternative models of nonrecursive, transactional pathways between family socioeconomic disadvantage and exogenous parent characteristics. Aim III: To evaluate several theory-based competing hypotheses that test whether and through what mechanisms family income and financial hardship affect children's developmental outcomes. Aim IV: To examine whether the pathways identified in Aims II and III are moderated by neighborhood and policy contexts. Our goals in addressing these aims are to identify potential causal mechanisms by which family socioeconomic disadvantage affect children and to identify promising targets for future policy intervention.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the impact of living in poverty on children's development is as important as ever, given that the child poverty rate in the U.S. has remained stable at 18 percent for the last several years (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006) and is the second highest in the industrialized world (only slightly less than Mexico: UNICEF, 2005). Recent advances in research on socioeconomic disadvantage and child development by our research team and others have shifted concern from whether income poverty has an impact on children's outcomes to more complex questions regarding how poverty takes a toll on children, questions of greater relevance to the design of program and policy innovations. Thus our objective in this current proposal is to strengthen the field's understanding of the mechanisms through which families'trajectories of income and hardship affect children's trajectories of success versus difficulty in academic and socio-emotional domains. In addition, we propose to expand our empirical lens beyond families to the important contribution of school socio-economic disadvantage to children's development. In what represents a synthesis of the investigators'expertise in developmental psychology, social work, education, public policy, and sociology, we propose to address the following aims: Aim I: To examine how the timing, sequence, and duration of changes in family- level disadvantage impact the development of children's academic skills and social-emotional competence across elementary school and into middle school. Aim II: To apply the theoretical frame of specificity of environmental action to understanding the impact of school-level disadvantage on children's academic achievement and social-emotional competence. Aim III: To examine the independent, joint and sequential dynamic impacts of family-level and school-level contextual transitions on families'income and hardship and in turn on the development of children's achievement and social-emotional competence. We will analyze data from all five waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to address these aims. Findings from this research have the potential to contribute to policy and program advances that will enhance the life chances of children in poor and low income families. This project aims to understand the mechanisms through which family-level and school-level poverty and disadvantage affect children's cognitive and social-emotional development from kindergarten through 8th grade. Findings from this research have the potential to contribute to policy and program advances that will enhance the life chances of children in poor and low income families.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A decade after the end of apartheid, the well-being of South African children is still in a precarious state. Nearly 70% of the nation's Black African children live in households with incomes less than $2000 per year. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate for pregnant women attending public antenatal services is over 30%. And, by 2010, 19% of South African children will have experienced the death of one or both parents, half due to AIDS. In response to this crisis, the overarching objective of the proposed project is to conduct a short-term, longitudinal, multi-level study of 6000 7- to 10-year-olds and their parents/parent surrogates in 60 urban and rural South African communities in KwaZulu-Natal. We posit three specific aims. AIM 1. Examine the associations between a) a set of major household risk factors and a set of adverse childhood experiences; and between b) the occurrence and nature of adverse childhood experiences and child psychosocial, health and educational outcomes. AIM 2. Explore the degree to which selected factors at multiple levels moderate the influence of major household risk factors on adverse childhood experiences, and adverse childhood experiences on key child outcomes. AIM 3. Test the effects of a major social policy innovation Conditional Cash Transfers on household and childhood risk factors (directly) and children's well-being (indirectly). This project is a collaboration of researchers at New York University in the U.S. and the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa in cooperation with the South African government and the World Bank. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The results of this study have two main implications for public health. First, one set of results will indicate whether Conditional Cash Transfers can improve the health, education and well-being of poor South African children in high HIV/AIDS prevalence communities. Second, another set of results can inform the design of new public health and social policy strategies to support households in AIDS-affected communities.