IBSS: The Levels and Timing of Family and School Influences on Children's Development

这一跨学科研究项目将确定儿童生活中两个最重要的背景--他们的家庭和学校--对儿童从出生到成年的发展的最佳水平和关键方面的时机。该项目将利用并贡献新的基础知识，这些知识将连接广泛的领域，包括发展心理学、社会学、人口学、教育社会学、教育心理学和经济学。该项目将对发展过渡问题提出新的见解，并对经历发展连续性的儿童和经历不连续性的儿童给予同等的重视，以确保整个早期生命过程中发展的连续性或不连续性。通过加强对儿童、他们的家庭、学校和其他背景因素之间复杂互动的基本了解，该项目将为设计干预措施提供信息，以解决一些儿童所经历的问题，并更有效地引导公共资金的使用，以实现最有效的干预。调查人员将重点研究三种方法来表征家庭和学校背景对儿童和青少年发展的影响：敏感期、转折点和过渡期。敏感期指的是发展中最容易受到背景影响并对预测未来运作最有效的时期。临界点是背景影响影响收益加速或递减的水平。过渡是环境中的重大变化，可能会影响个人的变化。研究人员将分析涵盖早期生命过程多个阶段的六个国家纵向数据集的数据，以及三个实验数据集的数据，这将使他们能够得出关于因果关系的更强有力的结论。该小组将实施符合各学科最佳做法的尖端统计方法。在整个项目中，调查人员将使用可用的最佳测量来检查概念模型的每个部分，在数据集和队列中复制模型，作为增加对结果的信心的一种手段，利用最先进的方法来捕捉个体发展的动态性质，并考虑替代解释和规范，以增加对因果推理的信心。该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究(IBSS)竞赛得到支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will identify the optimal levels and timing of key aspects of the two most important contexts in children's lives -- their families and their schools -- for the development of children from birth through their transition to adulthood. The project will draw on and contribute new fundamental knowledge that bridges a broad range of fields, including developmental psychology, sociology, demography, sociology of education, educational psychology, and economics. The project will yield new insights regarding developmental transitions precipitate continuity or discontinuity in development across the early life course, with equal emphasis placed on children who experience continuity in development as on children who experience discontinuity. By enhancing basic understanding of the complex interactions among children, their families, their schools, and other contextual factors, the project will inform the design of interventions to address problems experienced by some children and more effectively guide the use of public dollars toward the most efficient times for interventions.The investigators will focus on three ways of characterizing the influence of family and school contexts on child and youth development: sensitive periods, tipping points, and transitions. Sensitive periods refer to the times in development that are most susceptible to contextual influence and are most effective for predicting future functioning. Tipping points are the levels at which a contextual influence affects accelerated or diminishing returns. Transitions are major changes in a context that can affect changes in the individual. The investigators will analyze data from six national longitudinal datasets that cover multiple stages of the early life course as well as three experimental datasets that will permit them to draw stronger conclusions about causal relationships. The team will implement cutting-edge statistical methods that adhere to the best practices across disciplines. Throughout the project, the investigators will use the best available measurements to examine each part of the conceptual model, replicate models across datasets and cohorts as a means of increasing confidence in results, leverage state-of-the-art methods to capture the dynamic nature of individual development, and consider alternative explanations and specifications in order to increase confidence in causal inferences. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.