Advanced Training Institute: NICHD-SECCYD

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad objective of this project is to increase knowledge about and skills in accessing and using large scale databases as a normal part of the research process. The immediate goal of this application is to request funding for five annual training workshops to train researchers to access, analyze and use the data sets of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), a longitudinal, comprehensive study of the development of children in the context of their family and in out of home environments. During the course of the 5-day Institute, expert instructors (study investigators and statistical analysts) will familiarize carefully selected participants with the NICHD study data. Topics covered will include the conceptual framework of the study, its methodological design, the documentation of research instruments, the documentation of the psychometric properties of a large subset of variables included in the analytical data sets and with the raw data sets. Participants will be able to consult with instructors about the most appropriate variables for their analyses, and about cutting-edge analytical methods. The workshops will include classroom lecture sessions, discussion sessions, and computer lab "hands on" sessions in which participants will access and use the data sets. The goal of the workshop is for participants to be able to independently use and train others to use the NICHD databases for original scholarship and publication. The Advanced Training Institute (ATI) will train about 20 researchers each year. Over the five years of the project, a cadre of about 100 researchers will develop expertise about the NICHD SECCYD databases and other databases. This knowledge will increase the return on investment in the creation of such large scale data bases in many ways: it will augment knowledge in the area of child development by encouraging multidisciplinary approaches, it will encourage large and detailed sample knowledge, it will encourage secondary analyses in ways that would not have been possible otherwise, and it will extend the utility of the data to a broad set of researchers beyond the original study investigators.