Culture and Social Change in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Individualism, Collectivism and Parenting Attitudes

Project Description

This project will augment the longitudinal Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS) to create a national data resource, the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Rural Aging , for the study of early determinants of the aging experience in a rural context. Aging is primarily studied with samples that begin in midlife or later and assess individuals yearly or less often. By building on the GSMS, this project will allow researchers to continue to study into their 40s a population that has assessment data going back to childhood.

Furthermore, a premature mortality crisis has ravaged rural communities where economic opportunities and key infrastructures have declined and social disintegration has increased The objective of work is to develop a new data resource that captures the full arc of a life with intimate detail about living and aging in a rural context.

Project Goals

  • Assess participant's health, health risks, and cognitive, social and economic functioning in their early 40s
  • Evaluate everyday life and the rural context of adults in rural Appalachia
  • Harmonize data collected in this project with key aging studies to facilitate urban/rural and Appalachia/national comparisons

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Project Description

This project builds on the ongoing Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) longitudinal study that began in 2008 with recruitment of a sample of 1,417 8-year-old children and their mothers and fathers from nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States). We have assessed families annually through interviews with mothers, fathers, and children about the parent-child relationship, the child’s development, and cultural values. At ages 10, 13, and 16, we administered a computerized battery to measure children’s reward-seeking, self-regulation, and social information processing, as well as risk-taking behavior.

During the period of this supplement to the PAC project, the original child participants are 20 to 21 years old, a crucial period for understanding family and cultural influences on decisions, risks, competencies, and opportunities. In the ongoing longitudinal study, we conduct interviews annually with young adults and their parents to assess health-compromising and risky behaviors as well as competencies in important domains of education, work, and intimate partnerships. With this supplement, we added COVID-19-related questions to the annual interview battery and administered a briefer COVID-19-focused measure at three additional time points each year to assess behavioral and emotional functioning in relation to the rapidly-evolving situation in each country’s response to the pandemic.

Together the eight international sites plus the United States offer the potential to advance understanding of social, psychological, behavioral, and economic predictors of responses to COVID-19; social, psychological, behavioral, and economic outcomes related to COVID-19 containment and mitigation efforts; and moderators of risk and resiliency in the face of diverse social determinants of health. This new understanding will inform future public health responses that have the potential to improve population health and well-being in the face of a global pandemic.

Project Goals

Aim 1: Predictors: We test the hypothesis that social (e.g., parent-child relationship quality), psychological (e.g., anxiety), behavioral (e.g., risky or antisocial behavior), and economic (e.g., not having enough money to pay for basic living expenses) factors assessed prior to the pandemic predict competence and maladaptation (e.g., depression, alcohol and other substance use, marital and family conflict) during and after the pandemic.

Aim 2: Outcomes: We test the hypothesis that experiences during the pandemic (personal disruptions and changes in behaviors) predict social, psychological, behavioral, and economic outcomes following the pandemic.

Aim 3: Moderators: We test the hypothesis that individuals’ confidence that that government and health system are handling the COVID-19 pandemic in the best possible manner and individuals’ optimism regarding the future resolution of the pandemic moderate associations between risk factors prior to the pandemic and competence and maladaptation during the pandemic and its aftermath.

Project Findings

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Project Description

In the best of times, access and retention in the WIC, SNAP and Medicaid programs is a challenge across the nation and in North Carolina. In 2019, North Carolina only reached 54 percent of the WIC eligible population. While SNAP coverage rates are much higher in North Carolina at 85 percent, mirroring the national average, many counties struggle to meet federal and state benchmarks for timeliness and error rates. As a result, many eligible families are denied access to these program or experience delays in receiving crucial benefits. This tenuous access to WIC, SNAP and Medicaid contributes to food insecurity and barriers to health care access among the state most vulnerable families.

Project Goals

This project is a qualitative study to better understand existing barriers to participation in social safety net programs.

COVID-19 Related Additional Work

In response to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, policymakers  made important policy changes to enhance access to safety net programs, yet these changes were made at a time when the programs were strained by the pandemic. Federal policy waivers have loosened application guidelines, extended eligibility periods, and made it easier for beneficiaries to use benefits. These changes have enhanced access to these public assistance programs. However, the economic fallout of the pandemic has increased demand for public assistance programs by 30 to 40 percent across states — a demand that has severely challenged the capacity of many resource constrained social service agencies.

This study examines how families have experienced these new policy changes, as well as, how county agencies have adapted to unprecedented demand and new ways of engaging clients (e.g. remote telework, new application guidelines, and extended eligibility deadlines).

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Project Description

Research on rural poverty shows how poverty adversely affects children but seldom considers how public welfare agencies reinforce racial inequality in the rural South. Instead, studies point to the short supply of social services and benefits in rural communities, with little insight on how these limited social services actually function within these communities to disadvantage low-income racial minorities and contribute to racial disparities in child development.

Project Goals

Thia study draws from quantitative and ethnographic data across three rural counties to examine how the distinct features of rural southern communities inform organizational practices of public welfare agencies in ways that reinforce racial inequality and negatively influences family processes and adolescent development outcomes. This study examines how rural contexts shape access to four prominent safety net programs:  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, the Child Care Subsidy, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

 

Project Description

CCFP researchers are working with Families and Communities Rising to select, implement, and evaluate a school readiness assessment at their Head Start sites across Durham and Orange Counties. CCFP will first conduct a landscape analysis to assist in the selection of a school readiness assessment tool. CCFP will then assist in training teachers on how to use the results of the selected measure to inform and enhance teaching strategies, as well as how to share the results with caregivers so that they are aware of their child’s strengths, and areas for growth both at home and at school. CCFP will then analyze end of year school readiness data for all rising kindergarteners and develop a report for FCR leadership and stakeholders.

Project Description

This study aims to understand mechanisms in the global context through which exposure to different types of adverse experiences in childhood increases risk of adverse behavioral and psychosocial outcomes into early adulthood. Exposure to childhood adversity such as physical/sexual abuse, domestic violence, community violence, poverty, neglect, and institutionalization is common; estimates range from 12% in Europe to 64% in Asia. Childhood adversity impacts both neurological and psychological development and is frequently found to be a strong predictor of adverse outcomes in adulthood, including risk behaviors such as interpersonal violence, alcohol problems, and sexual risk-­taking.

This study utilizes longitudinal cohort data from Parenting Across Cultures and Young Lives-­Peru. Together, these sources contain 17 waves of data among three cohorts, spanning childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood with participants from 10 different countries.

Goals

The specific aims of this research are to:

  1. Identify the elements of adversity in early and middle childhood and their related risk behavior outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood.
  2. Determine to what extent the relationships in Aim 1 are mediated by different indicators of cognitive functioning and emotional regulation
  3. Determine to what extent the relationships between the elements of adversity in early and middle childhood and the indicators of cognitive functioning and emotional regulation are moderated by parenting behaviors and cultural norms of parenting.
  4. To understand the effects of the research cross-­culturally and across different longitudinal data sets.

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Project Description

Together with the Hunt Institute, researchers from CCFP are implementing a collaborative partnership to support NC DHHS’ Division of Child Development and Early Education in completing updates to North Carolina’s Preschool Development (Birth Through Five) Needs Assessment required as part of the state’s current PDG B-5 Renewal Grant. These updates will be aligned with – and thoughtfully expand upon – the original Needs Assessment and the NC Early Childhood Action Plan.

Goals

Across five proposed categories of deliverables, the partners will prepare and provide all requested data and supports to DCDEE, including:

  • Ongoing communication and collaboration with DCDEE Leadership and the PDG B-5 Needs Assessment Advisory Committee.
  • A comprehensive data review and update designed to bring North Carolina’s PDG B-5 Needs Assessment, originally prepared and released just before the onset of Covid-19, up to date – allowing policymakers to assess the current realities being faced by the state’s families, children, and early childhood providers.
  • Qualitative data collection in the form of diverse, professional focus groups with families, providers, and other key NC stakeholders.
  • Expert analysis, to include the delivery of a thorough and thoughtful Needs Assessment Update.
  • Ongoing technical assistance and support to DCDEE across the grant period.

Project Findings

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Project Description

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.

Dr. Gennetian is one of six PIs on this unique multi-disciplinary study directing the social science targeted data collection and analysis that includes aspects of economic distress, employment, early care and education and well-being of the children’s families, facilitating partnerships with stakeholders in each of the four study sites and facilitated communication, dissemination and fundraising.

Project Goals

The study is designed to produce strong and clear evidence about the magnitude and pathways of causal connections between family income and early childhood development. Beyond its core contributions to science, the study will provide important evidence about the likely effects of tax and income-enhancement policies for young children, such as the Child and Earned Income Tax Credits, and related social policies designed to enhance family economic stability and well-being.

Project Findings

Food Security, Spending and Consumption
Program Design and Families' Experiences
Additional Journal Articles and Working Papers
Baby's First Years in the News

Yana A.Kuchirko, Lerzan Z.Coskun, Helena Duch, Maria M. Castaner, Lisa A.Gennetian. Children and Youth Services Review (2021) 128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106133

Jennifer E.Lansford, Natalie Goulter, Jennifer Godwin, Max Crowley, Robert J.McMahon, John E.Bates, Gregory S.Pettit, Mark Greenberg, John E.Lochman, Kenneth A.Dodge. Addictive Behaviors (2021) 120: 106958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106958

William E. Copeland, Guangyu Tong, Elizabeth J. Gifford, Michele M. Easter, Lilly Shanahan, Marvin S. Swartz, Jeffrey W. Swanson. Pediatrics (2021) 148 (2): e2020 – 042291. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-042291

Project Description

CCFP researchers have partnered with colleagues at The Hunt Institute and Child Trends on multiple projects for North Carolina's Preschool Development Grant, within the North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education

The Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG) is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care.

CCFP Preschool Development Grant Publications

 

Christina Gibson-Davis, Heather D. Hill. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences (2021) 7 (3): 1-26. https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2021.7.3.01

Project Description

In the U.S., 1 in 8 youth will experience child maltreatment by age 18. Young children, aged 0-8, are particularly vulnerable. Local social service agencies and health care providers routinely make decisions regarding a child’s risk for maltreatment. Yet, providers have limited information to guide their decisions and rarely receive feedback regarding the children’s long-term outcomes. However, research suggests that children reported for alleged maltreatment tend to have poor health outcomes and are often re-reported to social services.

This study aims to better predict which children who are the subject of alleged maltreatment experience poor outcomes in the health and social services systems. We hypothesize that by incorporating information for the focal child and their family members’ health and social service use patterns, and social risk factors (e.g., housing insecurity), we will be able to improve our understanding of a typology of children at-risk for poor outcomes. The lack of a feedback mechanism regarding how children fare following an alleged report for maltreatment prevents case workers from reflecting on prior decisions. Moreover, because caseworkers can only access information collected within their agency, they are missing critical information detected by the health care system. Information from health care providers could inform needed family preservation services that would improve child safety and keep families intact.

Project Goals

This study aims to use predictive analytics to better predict who is at-risk for maltreatment and subsequent adverse outcomes. We will begin with children who are reported to child protective services for alleged maltreatment and incorporate information on prior (a) health care use of the focal child, his/her siblings and parents; (b) social services involvement of the focal child, his/her siblings, and parents; and (c) the parents’ exposure to other social risk factors including criminal justice system involvement and housing insecurity. These analyses will aid in the development of predictive algorithms to identify children at risk of poor outcomes and improve service delivery.

Related Findings

Related Projects

Project Description

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.

Project Goals

To evaluate the impact of the North Carolina More at Four and Smart Start programs and the Building Blocks pre-k math program. Findings will inform developmental science and education policy.

More information here.

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Project Description

Child abuse and neglect affects over six million U.S. children per year. However, preventing child maltreatment and its poor outcomes is challenging due to lack of timely identification of children at risk. We lack a clear understanding of the types of interactions that at-risk children and their families have with professionals who could recognize risk factors and direct families to resources to help prevent child maltreatment.

Project Goals

The goal of this study is to analyze how children with documented maltreatment have interacted with the healthcare system and local agencies prior to their referral to social services and/or law enforcement.

The study hopes to reveal patterns of interactions with health and social services that could assist with the prospective and early identification of children at risk of maltreatment, facilitate determination of those child- and family-level factors associated with different forms of maltreatment, and enable evaluation of how children who have experienced maltreatment are cared for by the health and social services systems.

Related Findings and Resources

Project Description

Positive social-emotional development in early childhood is essential for lifelong health and well-being. When children have safe environments and secure relationships with parents or caregivers, their bodies and brains are fully able to develop complex skills like self-regulation, empathy, resilience, and curiosity that are the building blocks for learning and growth. For children who experience trauma or chronic adversity, though, those developmental processes are interrupted, increasing their risk for a range of negative outcomes from dropping out of school to developing diabetes and other chronic illnesses in adulthood. With a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH), a Durham-based nonprofit with expertise in trauma-informed approaches to early childhood development, brought together partners in early care and education, pediatrics, family support, mental health, and homeless services in a unified strategy called Responsive Early Access for Durham’s Young Children (READY).

Project Goals

The goal of the project is to build community capacity to screen, assess and provide evidence-based treatment services to children ages 0 to 8 with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. The grant funds multiple training opportunities for medical, mental health, and education professionals so that they can learn to: a) conduct validated screenings, b) implement evidence-based prevention programs and c) provide treatment services to children and families. Increased training programs are expected to expand the skillset of adults, both professional and lay, who work with children; increasing the likelihood that children who need services will be identified and served. Lastly, the grant funds outreach programs for the broader community to increase awareness of the social emotional and mental health needs of Durham’s youngest children. Over the five-year grant cycle, the Center for Child and Family Policy (CCFP) at Duke will evaluate the impacts of the READY program at the community, agency, and individual child/family level.

Project Team Members

Nicole Lawrence (PI), Elizabeth Snyder-Fickler (PI), Sonya Ulrich, Kelly Evans

Related Resources

Project Description

This project is an evaluation of Benchmarks’ Partnering for Excellence (PFE), a model that seeks to improve the well-being of children and families in contact with the child welfare system and reduce the need for higher end behavioral services through a more trauma-informed community, which can result in reduces in behavioral healthcare expenditures.

PFE redesigns the local child welfare/behavioral health system, changing the way local Departments of Social Services, managed care organizations, local providers, and the wider community understand trauma and the need for accessible, appropriate mental health services for children, youth and families who have experienced potentially traumatic events. PFE aims to lead communities to an understanding of the importance of trauma-informed and trauma-responsive communities, to create a lasting change in the identification and treatment of trauma within the community.

Project Goals

This project evaluates the effects of PFE on services and outcomes for children involved in the child welfare system in five NC counties. Using an interrupted time series design with comparison groups, we examine the effectiveness of PFE in providing proactive mental health assessment and treatment to improve behavioral health outcomes, reduce use of high-end services, and lower cost over time.

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Project Description

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.

This project brings together two longstanding studies (Fast Track and Great Smoky Mountains Study) to test how successful childhood interventions influence future parenting and whether benefits persist into the next generation. Analyses will draw on new data collected from parent surveys, low-cost daily virtual assessments of parents and children, and high-quality education and birth records of the offspring. Findings will inform prevention efforts, developmental science, and policy by mapping how childhood interventions may be transmitted across generations.

Project Goals

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 will then test whether the positive income shock, or separately, random assignment to the Fast Track 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 will also 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.

More information here.

Related Findings and Resources

Project Description

The North Carolina Center for Resilience and Learning is a partnership with the Public School Forum of North Carolina to promote and support trauma-informed schools across the state. The project team works closely with districts and schools to provide professional learning and ongoing coaching to meet school-specific needs and goals. Our work aims to create systems-level change by shifting the culture and mindset of an entire school so that staff begin to see a child’s behavior in the context of their life experiences, in consideration of possible trauma history or stress response system triggers. This helps educators shift how they approach relationships, environmental structure, social-emotional learning, and discipline in ways that ultimately create safer and more supportive environments in the classroom, while still maintaining high expectations for behavior and academics. Moreover, this work prioritizes teacher and staff wellness to be sure educators first have their needs met so that they have the capacity to meet the needs of their students. The effects of the Resilience and Learning model are being evaluated in several school districts across North Carolina, though COVID has altered model implementation and data collection over the past two school years.

Project Goals

The NC Resilience and Learning Project aims to build understanding and awareness about trauma and its impacts while also helping schools focus on resilience, support, and safety for their staff and students.

Related Resources

 

Project Description

Using the most diverse, prospectively studied, multi-national sample to date, this study will generate empirical findings to develop a model of child- and family-level mediators and culture-level moderators of the role of childhood risk factors and young adult competence and maladaptation. Cross-cultural comparisons will inform domestic models of young adult maladaptation. The proposed research builds on the ongoing Parenting Across Cultures longitudinal study that began in 2008 with recruitment of a sample of 1,417 8-year-old children and their mothers and fathers from nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States).

The original child participants are 17 to 21 years old, a crucial period for understanding family and cultural influences on decisions, risks, competencies, and opportunities. We will conduct interviews annually with young adults, their parents, and a friend to assess health-compromising and risky behaviors as well as competencies in important domains of education, work, and intimate partnerships.

Project Goals

This project has three aims:

  1. Test the hypothesis that parenting influences on impulsive risky behaviors are indeed universal, but only when the construct of “risky behaviors” is identified in a culturally-specific way. We will create profiles of health-compromising and risky behaviors during the transition to adulthood that are situated in cultural contexts that vary widely with respect to economic factors, norms about the acceptability of different behaviors, and opportunities for engaging in risky behaviors.
  2. Test the hypothesis that cultural contexts moderate associations between early parenting factors and the development of both competence and maladaptation during the transition to adulthood.
  3. Use empirical findings to develop a broad model of child-level and family-level mediators of links between childhood risk factors and young-adult competence and maladaptation.

Addressing these three aims in the most diverse, prospectively studied, multi-national sample to date will have major public health implications because this knowledge will inform scientific understanding of the etiology of health-compromising and risky behaviors during the transition to adulthood. This new understanding will inform intervention practices to improve population health and well-being.

Project Team Members

Liane Alampay (Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, Philippines), Suha Al-Hassan (Hashemite University, Amman, Jordan; and Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, UAE), Dario Bacchini (University of Naples, “Federico II,” Naples, Italy), Marc H. Bornstein (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., USA), Lei Chang (University of Macau, Macau, China), Kirby Deater-Deckard (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass., US), Laura Di Giunta (Rome University ‘LaSapienza’, Rome, Italy), Kenneth A. Dodge (Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA), Jennifer W. Godwin (Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA), Sevtap Gurdal (University West, Trollhättan, Sweden),  Jennifer E. Lansford (Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA), Patrick S. Malone (Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA), Paul Oburu (Maseno University, Kisumu, Kenya), Concetta Pastorelli (Rome University ‘La Sapienza,’ Rome, Italy), Ann Skinner (Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA), Emma Sorbring (University West, Trollhättan, Sweden), Laurence Steinberg (Temple University, Philadelphia, Penn., USA), Sombat Tapanya (Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand), Liliana M. Uribe Tirado (Universidad San Buenaventura, Medellin, Colombia), Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong (Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand)

Related Findings and Resources

Parenting Across Cultures website

 

Project Description

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.

Dr. Gennetian leads the Poverty and Economic Self-Sufficiency area, one of four topical areas of focus for the Center. The Poverty and Economic Self-Sufficiency research examines economic instability, use and experiences with government programs and benefits and Hispanic parents time in work and with children considering the heterogeneity of Hispanic children across dimensions of parents’ U.S. nativity status, ethnic origin and English language proficiency.

Project Goals

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families’s goals are to advance a rigorous agenda, build research capacity, and disseminate evidence to diverse stakeholders across academia, policy and practice.

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Project Description

Around 1,000 hourly service workers with young children in a large US city were sampled with an initial focus on work schedule unpredictability and worker and family well-being. In the form of a daily SMS text messages, participants were asked about their work and home experiences as well as their well-being every day at various points four weeks in fall 2019 and for two weeks in winter 2020. The data collection then shifted with the emergence of COVID-19 to reflect pandemic-related concerns such as food insecurity, job loss, income, and access to pandemic-specific and broader social safety net policy supports. Data collection is ongoing.

Project Goals

The initial goal of this project was to understand how unpredictable work schedules affect hourly service workers and their families. With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project then added goals including

  • Understanding how the pandemic affected socioeconomically disadvantaged families, considering both economic and psychological well-being.
  • Examining how unequal access to social programs exacerbates racial inequities.

Related Findings and Resources

Project Description

This longitudinal study is a collaboration among Auburn University, Indiana University, and Duke University that investigates children’s social development and adjustment by following 585 children from two cohorts recruited in consecutive years, 1987 and 1988, from Nashville, Tenn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Bloomington, Ind. The children were recruited the year before they entered kindergarten; the project is now in its 33rd year. Annual data from age 5 to 28 are available from multiple informants, including children, parents, teachers, peers, observers, and school records. Additional data were collected at age 34.

Project Aims

  1. Modeling risk across development for adult health and) well-being outcomes;
  2. Identifying risk profiles associated with adult service utilization and public costs;
  3. Evaluate how early investment can be optimized to reduce public costs.

Research Findings

Project Description

This project is a state-wide randomized controlled study of Family Centered Treatment. The project is implemented in partnership with the Family Centered Treatment Foundation (FCTF), a nonprofit organization serving over 60 sites across 10 U.S. states. FCTF provides licensing, training, and oversight of the Family Centered Treatment (FCT) model to human service organizations.

The Center for Child and Family Policy will enroll approximately 375 children/youth and their families in the longitudinal study over 3 ½ years. To monitor progress in child/youth and family well-being across multiple domains, youth and their caregivers recruited into the study will participate in baseline and follow-up interviews conducted by CCFP at six-month intervals for up to 18 months. With consent, participant records will be linked to multiple administrative datasets. Duke University’s Margolis Center for Health Policy will conduct a cost-benefit analysis designed to compare the value of FCT relative to Level II or III out-of-home placement.

Project Goals

This six-year longitudinal study will examine the effectiveness of the FCT model on youth, family and cost outcomes, relative to out-of-home placements. This study will be the first randomized controlled trial of FCT and, by comparing in-home therapy with residential care for high-risk children/youth, will fill a gap in the evidence base.

Project Team Members

Elizabeth Snyder-Fickler (PI), Nicole Lawrence (PI), Beth Gifford (PI), Carmen Alban, Kelly Evans, Don Taylor

Related Resources

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 and families with a continuum of comprehensive and high-quality supports, extending from before birth and through high school graduation.

Project Goals

Through funding from multiple foundations, CCFP has conducted an annual evaluation of DCI since 2011. CCFP’s researchers are conducting a rigorous, longitudinal evaluation of long-term impact of DCI services on child wellbeing, education and community-level outcomes. In addition, CCFP utilizes a multi-method process evaluation to assess implementation fidelity and short-term outcomes for core programs.

Project Team Members

Elizabeth Snyder-Fickler (PI), Nicole Lawrence (PI), Sonya Ulrich, Matt Edwards, Doreet Preiss (SSRI), Lorrie Schmid (SSRI)

Related Findings and Resources

 

Project Description

Evaluation of the Incredible Years Dinosaur Classroom Prevention Program (IY Dina) paired with teacher training in Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IYT). IY Dina is a universal social-emotional curriculum that trains children in the skills they need for self-regulation, improved school behavior, and enhanced social competence. IYT targets teachers’ use of effective classroom management strategies for building consistent routines, promoting positive relationships, strengthening prosocial behaviors, addressing misbehaviors, and creating a positive learning environment. The combined intervention approach will support successful self-regulation by simultaneously acting on environmental demands and child capacity to bring them into alignment.

The intervention was evaluated using a matched-pairs cluster randomized design with a sample of 120 NC preK classrooms in four North Carolina counties. Teachers in the intervention classrooms received training, materials, and ongoing coaching to implement both IY curricula with fidelity. Teachers in comparison classrooms were trained in both curricula during the final year of the grant.  Students were tested at the beginning and end of their pre-kindergarten year to measure their progress on social/emotional functioning, executive functioning and early literacy/achievement. They were tested again at the end of their kindergarten year to assess maintenance of gains.

Project Goals

This cluster randomized trial evaluated the synergistic effects of the child-directed Incredible Years Dinosaur Classroom Prevention Program paired with teacher training in Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management.

Project Team Members

Christina Christopoulos (Co-PI), Katie Rosanbalm (Co-PI), Courtney White-Clark, Claudia Shapiro, Becky Stern, Sonya Ulrich, Matt Edwards

Related Resources and Projects

Project Description

This effort will expand the operational capacity of the Guilford County Department of Public Health to implement the Family Connects model in support of Phase One of the Get Ready Guilford Initiative.

Project Goals

The overall goal of the Get Ready Guilford Initiative is to promote the health, development, and school readiness of all children in Guilford County through the development a comprehensive, ongoing system to assess family’s needs (children prenatal through age 8) and the development of a coordinated support system to connect all families with identified need to matched community services. Family Connects is an integral part of the coordinated support system.

Related Projects and Resources

Project Description

Over the course of 18 months, Family Connects and Nurse-Family Partnership proposed to develop, field test, and implement an innovative approach to reaching and serving all pregnant women in three zip codes in Guilford County, NC.

Project Goals

Our goal is to have an impact on the entire population of women giving birth in this geographical area, not merely those who participate in a particular program.

Related Projects and Resources

Project Description

Principal Investigator Desiree W. Murray, co-Investigator David Rabiner, and research staff investigated whether the Incredible Years Teacher Program (IYT) had an impact on K-2 students’ attention, social-emotional functioning, and academic achievement. The Incredible Years Training Series, developed by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, is a multi-component evidence-based intervention for young children including parent training, teacher training, and child training.

Using a randomized controlled trial design, Murray examined change in teacher practices and student functioning from the fall to spring of the school year in three cohorts of students. Recruitment of K-2 teachers at the grade level was successful, with almost 100 teachers in 11 schools across Orange, Franklin, and Alamance county school participating. Parent consent was also very good overall, in the 75%-80% range, for a total of approximately 1200 students. Outcome measures included the CLASS, a standardized classroom observation measure that assesses teacher-student interactions and classroom management skills, teacher ratings of student attention, behavior, and social competence, and computerized assessment of students’ academic achievement on the STAR.

© 2012 The Incredible Years, Inc. All rights reserved. “THE INCREDIBLE YEARS” and all related trademarks are owned by The Incredible Years, Inc. USA. Limited use of trademarks and copyrighted material is by license from The Incredible Years, Inc. All program materials must be ordered through The Incredible Years Website.

Project Goals

This study, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, provided data regarding academic outcomes for elementary-aged students when IYT is implemented as an independent intervention, which had not previously been examined.

Related Projects

Project Results

Preliminary Effects of the Incredible Years Teacher Training Program on Classroom Management Skills

BRIDGE: Measuring Effects of Classroom Management Training on Early Learning Skills

The Incredible Years Classroom Management Teacher Training Program: Content, Methods, and Process

Project Description

The objective of this research was to explore the use of state-of-the-science brain imaging and analysis procedures in evaluating the effectiveness of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) used in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. This objective was accomplished by pursuing three specific aims: 1) identifying and cataloging features of youth-focused PSAs featured in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign that reflected their sensation value; 2) identifying regions of the brain activated by exposure to high and low sensation value anti-drug PSAs as a function of individual differences in sensation seeking; and 3) examining the association between brain activity following exposure to anti-drug PSAs and short-term changes in drug-related attitudes and behavior.

Project Goals

To explore the use of state-of-the-science brain imaging and analysis procedures in evaluating the effectiveness of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) used in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.

Project Findings

Associations Between Message Features and Subjective Evaluations of the Sensation Value of Antidrug Public Service Announcements

Communicating With Sensation Seekers: An Fmri Study of Neural Responses to Antidrug Public Service Announcements

Project Description

Hispanic youth represent a growing proportion of America’s future workforce. The vast majority are U.S.-born and raised in income-poor households, yet little is understood about the influence of social and income security policy on their well-being. Despite eligibility, Hispanic families are less likely to receive income assistance than their peers. Resulting differences in household net income may contribute to observed racial/ethnic disparities in youth developmental outcomes.

In this study Dr. Gennetian leads collection of policy indicators from 13 states in which over 80% of low-income (200% below poverty) Hispanic children and youth reside.  The study aims to: (a) generate a framework for expanding the data collection to all 50 states, contemporaneously as well as retrospectively; (b) assess the feasibility of mapping the impact of such indicators on utilization of public benefits; and, (c) inform feasibility of identifying the impact of public benefit receipt on reducing or exacerbating racial/ethnic youth outcome disparities. The approach—via quantitative and qualitative data about on the ground practices—will provide new descriptive information for the field as well as a foundational infrastructure to support methodological opportunities identifying the causal contribution of benefit receipt on observed racial/ethnic disparities in youth outcomes.

Project Goals

This project aims to inform how the experience of public and social services may differ for, and consequently shape, the behavioral and reproductive health outcomes of youth across race/ethnicity.

Project Results

State-level TANF Policies and Practice May Shape Access and Utilization among Hispanic Families

How State Policies Might Affect Hispanic Families’ Access to and Use of Child Care and Development Fund Subsidies

Project Description

There is very limited cross-cultural evidence on the relationship among parenting practices, children’s emotions, children’s social behaviors, and children’s general well-being. I have teamed up with a young scholar, Dr. Laura DiGuinta, in Italy to examine how culture influences these factors. We collected data from 460 11- to 12-year-old children and their parents who were previously involved in the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) in Durham, NC, USA as well as Rome and Naples, Italy. We hypothesized that culture will affect how parenting practices influence children’s abilities to control and express their emotions as well as accurately interpret social situations.

This project capitalized on the unique intellectual communities at Sapienza and Duke University, stimulating unique scientific cross-cultural conversations. Our in-person discussions and research findings were used to draw implications for child/adolescent policies, prevention programs, and interventions.

Support from the Trent Foundation facilitated data collection and analysis, ultimately expediting scientific reports, national and international presentations, and dissemination of policy briefs.

Project Goals

To study relationships among parenting practices, children’s emotions, children’s social behaviors, and children’s general well-being across cultures.

Project Findings

Parents’ and early adolescents’ self-efficacy about anger regulation and early adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems: A longitudinal study in three countries

Project Description

This project evaluated the School Based Child and Family Support Team (CFST) Initiative, which provides appropriate family-centered, strengths-based community services and supports to those children at risk of school failure or out-of-home placements as a result of physical, social, legal, emotional or developmental factors that affect their academic performance.

Early results indicated that the CFST program was working with high-risk families through family group conferencing. Linking records across agencies (education, juvenile justice and social services) showed that many of the youth had histories of arrest and investigation for child maltreatment. Program participants, including school personnel (nurses and social workers, principals and local education agency coordinators), as well as parents and students, were highly satisfied with the program. Academic outcome measures were assessed.

Project Goals

Evaluate the School Based Child and Family Support Team (CFST) Initiative.

Project Results

School-Based Child and Family Teams Project: Summary Report to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Fiscal Years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008

School-Based Child and Family Support Teams (CFST)

Project Description

The harms of substance use and the specific public policies implemented for combating substance use are associated with societal costs estimated at over $500 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Prevailing debates on public policies for curbing substance use focus on the relative merits of employing a public health approach— awareness, prevention, and treatment—vs. a punitive approach. Over the last half century the punitive approach has predominated. It is estimated that the U.S. spends $63 billion annually in criminal enforcement related to substance use—through policing, court costs, and incarceration. Debates focus on the effectiveness of these policies in curbing substance use—particularly in light of the enormous increase that the war on drugs has caused in the prison population—which is associated with large societal costs and health and economic consequences for the offenders. Yet, researchers have only recently begun to examine how the consequences of criminal justice policies spillover to others, including the offenders’ children.

The proposed research expands on our prior research on criminal penalties by focusing on the effects of criminal penalties on outcomes of children of offenders. Our analysis takes advantage of a unique dataset that includes multiple North Carolina administrative databases linked at the child-level. The data include information on parental criminal involvement as well as children’s longitudinal outcomes in various settings, offering some important analytic advantages over survey data.

Project Aims

This study has four aims. The overarching question addressed in this study is how various criminal sanctions for substance related crimes affect child wellbeing. Aims 1 and 2 lay the foundation for the primary focus of this study, aims 3 and 4. Aim 1 strives to improve our understanding of what factors affect variation in sentencing so that we can more fully account for these sources of endogeneity in aims 3-4. Aim 2 will investigate factors that affect parental participation in specific state prison correctional programs, controlling for factors that led to the incarceration. Aim 3 examines how specific sanctions and participation in correctional programs affect parental recidivism and children’s probability of being removed from their parent’s care, in the 7 months to 3 years following the conviction. Aim 4 studies how specific sanctions and correctional programs applied to parents affect child wellbeing during follow-up.

The results of this study could inform sentencing guidelines and sanctions that are applied to individuals who are convicted of criminal charges related to substance use. Because the criminal justice system comes into contact with many individuals who abuse substances, and because the criminal justice system is a gateway for substance use treatment services and for other correctional programs, this work can inform policies that will have a public health impact. For instance, the use of alternative sentences, particularly for minor or first offenses, coupled with ancillary support services may be a desirable alternative to active incarceration.

Project Findings

Intergenerational effects of parental substance-related convictions and adult drug treatment court participation on children’s school performance

Criminally Involved Parents Who Misuse Substances and Children’s Odds of Being Arrested as a Young Adult: Do Drug Treatment Courts Mitigate the Risk?

Project Description

The Center partnered with the N.C. Division of Social Services, county-level departments of social services, other contractors and families for the project. Analysis of data from both the SOC and Multiple Response System (MRS) evaluations has shown that implementing MRS and SOC simultaneously not only enhanced the implementation of MRS, but also provided positive outcomes for children, families and communities. Of the 10 pilot counties involved in the MRS evaluation, three were also involved in the concurrent SOC evaluation.

A comparison of the data has shown enhanced outcomes in the SOC counties in several important areas:

  1. Child and Family Team meetings;
  2. community collaboration; and
  3. reducing duplication of services, effort and time.

Results from these two evaluations showed that SOC has expanded far beyond the Division of Social Services, creating a community system that not only values child and family partnership and strengths-based care, but also interagency collaboration, community-based services and supports for families, cultural competence and accountability to results

Project Goals

The goal of this project was to develop an evaluation process to determine whether a community-based, interagency Systems of Care (SOC) could effectively achieve positive outcomes for children and families involved with child welfare agencies and their partner agencies.

Project Findings

Improving Child Welfare Outcomes through Systems of Care:  A Guide for Strategic Planning

Evaluation of Systems of Care

Improving Child Welfare Outcomes through Systems of Care: Building the Infrastructure: A GUIDE FOR COMMUNITIES

Project Description

The Children’s Bureau awarded the Alamance County Department of Social Services (ACDSS) one of five national grants to demonstrate the use of Comprehensive Family Assessments (CFA) to improve child welfare outcomes. The Center for Child and Family Policy partnered with ACDSS to develop, implement, and evaluate an evidence-based model for conducting comprehensive family assessments, based on the Comprehensive Family Assessment Guidelines. This project developed CFA family engagement and caseworker visit policies, protocols, and procedures that were being implemented with a pilot team and a randomly selected intervention team. With assistance from the Duke Addictions Program, ACDSS staff was also being trained and coached to utilize motivational interviewing to develop partnerships and engage with families in the assessment and case planning process.

Project Goals

This project utilized a rigorous evaluation approach to:

  1. assess the implementation of the CFA process with the pilot and intervention teams;
  2. measure how the practice of comprehensive family assessments improves over time;
  3. utilizing a randomized trial, examine how the CFA process affects key outcomes related to the safety, permanency and well-being of children and families; and
  4. establish a replicable model for conducting comprehensive family assessments by producing detailed procedures and materials based on the evaluation.

Project Results

Comprehensive Family Assessment: A Brief Synthesis

Site Visit Report: Developing, Implementing and Evaluating a Comprehensive Family Assessment to Improve Child Welfare Outcomes in Alamance County, North Carolina

Project Description

In collaboration with Laurence Steinberg of Temple University and grant funding from the Jacobs Foundation, Decision-Making in Everyday Life was an assessment of judgment, decision-making, and psychosocial development from over 350 participants in Durham and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The measures used were also being administered in China, Colombia, Cyprus, India, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, and Thailand. The assessment included questions about several aspects of development that affect the choices young people make, including choices to engage in risky and antisocial behavior. These aspects of development included impulsivity, foresight, sensation-seeking, planning, and reward salience.

Project Goals

The results had important policy implications with respect to issues such as making judgments about the criminal responsibility of juvenile offenders and understanding the age at which individuals develop the capacities to be held fully responsible for their actions.

Project Results

Adolescents’ Cognitive Capacity Reaches Adult Levels Prior to Their Psychosocial Maturity: Evidence for a “Maturity Gap” in a Multinational, Cross-Sectional Sample

Project Description

This project evaluated the QuitAssist™ Web site, a smoking cessation resource site developed and maintained by Philip Morris USA. The evaluation involved six studies, ranging from a large-scale survey to a usability analysis involving smoking cessation and Web design experts. If the evaluation finds that this Web-based resource facilitates smoking cessation, it will motivate additional studies of the Web as a means of producing change in health behavior. Although the grant was officially awarded to the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research, the majority of the funds are administered through the Center.

Project Goals

Evaluate QuitAssist™ Website.

Project Results

Tobacco Company Funded Research: A Reasoned Approach

Project Description

The Week in the Life Study used mobile touchscreen devices to understand how adolescents’ daily experiences affect their mental and physical well-being in everyday life.

Project Goals

In doing so, the study aimed to answer the following questions:

  1. What are the most frequently experienced stressors (negative events) and uplifts (positive events) in adolescents’ daily lives?
  2. What effects do these everyday stressors and uplifts have on adolescents’ behavior, self-regulation, and health?
  3. Can individual differences (such as personality and genetics) help identify which adolescents are more sensitive to their daily experiences than others?

Our hope is that this work will provide new ideas for educators, researchers, and others regarding which everyday experiences have the strongest effects on adolescents’ well-being, and whether adolescents who are typically viewed as “at-risk” may also be the most likely to benefit from intervention and enrichment activities.

Project Results

Week in the Life Flyer

Project Description

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have devastating effects on health and behavior. But many children avoid such dire outcomes, even thrive, despite exposures to multiple ACEs. It is not known, however, whether this individual resilience will be sustained into adulthood and transmitted to the next generation. This project brings together a longitudinal, community study which has followed 1420 participants from childhood into middle adulthood with a proposed biopsychosocial assessment of their offspring to test whether parental resilience improves offspring education, physical health and mental health outcomes.

Project Goals

To find whether parental resilience improves offspring education, physical health and mental health outcomes.

Project Description

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. We propose mapping 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%).

Project Aims

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 profiles and adult service utilization and ultimate public costs in adulthood, to monetize the possible returns on prevention investment;
  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 and Related Findings