Data Collection for Older NLSY Children Competing Cont.

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary objective of this proposal is to extend the NLSY79 young adult data collection for youth age 21 and over through the 2004 and 2006 data collection rounds. These youth represent the oldest children born to NLSY79 female respondents. The ongoing grant provides funds for interviews with youth age 21 and over in 2000 and 2002. With NICHD support, the children of the female respondents in the NLSY have biennially received a variety of age appropriate cognitive and socio-emotional assessments over the 1986 to 2002 period. The linking of these child test data with the wide range of maternal, family, and child attributes, attitudes, and behaviors which are available for the full life span of the NLSY (initiated in 1979) has permitted a large number of researchers in the areas of sociology, economics, psychology and child development and related disciplines to carry out a wide range of programmatic and policy relevant research linking various child development considerations with issues of social concern. This has included research in topical areas such as the effect of family background considerations on child development and how these factors jointly or separately impact on, for example, female employment, childcare, family poverty status or access to welfare. However, for a substantial portion of the research community, a critical issue concerns the subsequent connections between a child's success on these various assessments, along with additional early adolescent behaviors and subsequent adult "success" in the employment, education and family spheres. From an event history perspective, what aspects of family background translate into preferable emotional and intellectual development, and how does family background, jointly with or independent of cognitive/socio-emotional development predict early adult success? Since 1994, the NICHD has expanded their involvement in the NLSY data collection by supporting regular "NLSY style" interviews with children who have attained age 15. Due to funding limitations, starting in 2000 it became necessary to seek funds through the grant process to interview the oldest NLSY "young adult" children -- those age 21 and over. The funds obtained through the ongoing grant permitted interviewing these oldest young adults to continue through 2002, thus avoiding a significant age censoring of the data set that would have essentially negated the possibility of appropriately exploring adolescent to early adult transitions. Funding an extension of this grant will permit seminal work on understanding the importance of child and adolescent intellectual and socio-emotional development on the success of school to work and family transitions characteristic of early adulthood with a much larger and more heterogeneous plus racially/ethnically varied sample than has been possible until now.