RESEARCH TRAINING-CHILD MENTAL HEALTH/PRIMARY PREVENTION

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DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Abstract): This application seeks to continue our training program in Prevention Research through the Arizona State University Preventive Intervention Research Center (ASU PIRC). Our program has provided training to 24 pre-doctoral and 22 post-doctoral students since its original funding by NIMH in 1987. We train researchers in the prevention of negative mental health outcomes among high-risk children under stress. Theoretically, we assume that preventive interventions are best derived from a thorough, theory-based, empirically-supported, understanding of the risk and protective factors that influence the development of a targeted outcome. Within this acquisition-oriented framework, we emphasize a stress and coping model that considers the complex interplay of factors at multiple levels, including individual, family, peer, school, neighborhood, and cultural influences. We provide training in theory-based generative research; in the translation of this knowledge base into preventive interventions; in the implementation and empirical evaluation of these interventions; in the methodological and quantitative skills that are necessary to conduct these complex studies; and in the skills required to conduct these studies with different ethnic and cultural groups. The primary training site is the ASU PIRC, in which collaborative research teams conduct and evaluate theory-based preventive interventions for children of divorce, bereaved children, and inner-city children in poverty. Faculty from clinical, social, quantitative, and developmental psychology, family studies, economics, public affairs, and law deliver training through a combination of research apprenticeships, an ongoing training seminar, and formal coursework. This application requests support for 4 post-doctoral and 5 pre-doctoral fellows. Post-doctoral fellows will be recruited from component disciplines such as clinical, social, and developmental psychology, social ecology, statistics, sociology, and family studies. Pre-doctoral fellows are recruited from clinical, social, quantitative, and developmental psychology and family studies.