Children in Rural Poverty:Risk and Protective Mechanisms

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this program project is to study the early development of a group of Children who are at risk for later successful adjustment and for whom we have little information: children living in rural, largely poor communities. A birth cohort of 800 children in three rural counties of North Carolina and 600 children in three rural counties of Pennsylvania will be studied over the first 3 years of life. A multidisciplinary team will investigate multiple levels of influences affecting the early development of these children. The research emphases of the component research projects includes the following: Project I: Temperament: Emphasizes the development of child-related factors and how they predict preschool social-emotional and cognitive competence. Project II: School Readiness: Emphasizes the pathways to and precursors of school readiness. Project III: Family Process: Emphasizes how family processes mediate or moderate the effects of rural poverty on children. Project IV: Work and Family: Emphasizes the impact of parents' occupational conditions on parenting, and, in turn, children's social, cognitive, emotional and linguistic development. Project V: Ethnography: Emphasizes 1) an in-depth contextual appraisal of community characteristics and 2) a family ethnography with 72 families developmentally ahead of the cohort above to provide input to design and measurement. The purposes of the proposed cores are the following: Core : Data Collection: Recruitment of subjects and data collection for Projects I-IV Core : Data Management and Statistical Core: Data management and statistical expertise.