Research Projects

Building on the ongoing Parenting Across Cultures longitudinal study that began in 2008, this project will continue to follow participants in their early to mid-twenties.

The Prospective Study of Infant Development is a randomized control trial evaluation of the Family Connects program (formerly Durham Connects). In order to examine the ways in which family characteristics and community services are associated with family well-being, the Prospective Study of Infant Development interviewed families who had participated in Durham Connects on multiple aspects of family life, including parents’ opinions about parenting, child health and medical care, access and receipt of family services, and mothers’ well-being.

Project Description The Durham Children’s Initiative (DCI) (formerly East Durham Children’s Initiative) is a place-based, nonprofit organization that supports children and families from cradle to college or career. Established in 2010, DCI’s vision is that all children in Durham graduate from high school ready for college or career. To achieve this vision, DCI provides children…

Baby’s First Years is a pathbreaking study of the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash gifts to low-income mothers and their children in the first three years of the child’s life. The cash gifts are funded through charitable foundations. The study will identify whether reducing poverty can affect early childhood development and the family processes that support children’s development.

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families is a collaboration between Child Trends and three university based research partners and serves as a hub of research-based information on low-income Hispanic children and families.

The Durham Navigation Study is a randomized control trial to evaluate the impact of Community Navigation on outcomes for young children and their families.

This study provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand whether and how primals in early adulthood are predicted by childhood and adolescent experiences and how parents’ primals are related to their young adult children’s primals in the most diverse long-term longitudinal study ever conducted.