Ecological instability over early childhood and children's health and wellbeing

 描述(申请人提供)：该奖学金的目标是研究儿童早期环境生态的稳定性，以及这些生态环境的不稳定如何影响儿童的健康和福祉以及人口层面不平等的更广泛模式。以前研究儿童不平等和生态不稳定的文献通常考察了暴露在生态环境中的时间点，或者只关注一个领域的不稳定。这项研究通过采取动态的、多维的和以儿童为中心的方法来扩展现有文献，以探讨生态不稳定的短期和长期发展影响。这项研究将社会学、人口学和发展心理学的概念联系起来，以实现这一目标。在这项努力中，这项研究提出了三个主要问题：(1)在儿童生命的头五年，工作-家庭-护理关系中的不稳定性看起来是什么样子；(2)儿童是否会影响他们自己在童年早期的生态不稳定经历，如果是的话，哪些因素(例如身体健康、社会行为)最有可能影响这些环境；(3)儿童早期不稳定与儿童童年中后期的健康和幸福相关吗？此外，这项研究的一个重要组成部分是检查这些趋势如何因儿童的社会经济地位而不同，这可以说明生态不稳定如何塑造不平等的代际传递。在回答这些问题时，本研究利用了两个相辅相成的数据来源：NICHD关于早期儿童保育和青年发展的研究(SECCYD)和脆弱家庭和儿童福祉研究(FFCW)。这些数据集允许仔细检查家庭结构的变化、母亲的工作特点以及儿童的家庭外照料，因为在儿童早期与家庭的频繁访谈中收集了详细的信息。此外，这两个数据集都有儿童发展的客观和主观衡量标准，包括他们在童年中期和后期的身体健康、行为和学习结果。分析计划使用潜在类别分析(LCA)来确定早期儿童的生态不稳定经历，并使用交叉滞后结构方程模型和回归分析来检查儿童在影响他们的生态环境中所起的作用以及儿童早期不稳定可能如何 与儿童在童年中期和后期的健康和幸福感较差有关。将使用其他统计技术来解决选择偏差和因果推断问题。这项理论上扎根的研究对政策有重要影响。了解哪些类型的不稳定使特定家庭群体在其他领域面临随后不稳定的风险，以及哪些不稳定特征与较差的儿童健康和福祉有关，可以为针对弱势儿童和家庭的政策和干预措施提供信息，并说明人口健康和福祉不平等的更大趋势。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this fellowship is to examine the stability of early childhood environmental ecologies and how instability in these ecological settings affect childhood health and well-being and broader patterns of population-level inequality. Prior literature investigating childhood inequality and ecological instability has typically examined point-in-time exposure to ecological contexts or focused on instability in only one domain. This study extends the existing literature by taking a dynamic, multi-dimensional, and child-centered approach to the short- and long-term developmental implications of ecological instability. This study bridges conceptual ideas from sociology, demography, and developmental psychology to accomplish this goal. In this effort, this study asks three main questions: (1) what does instabiliy in the work-family-care nexus look like during the first five years of children's lives; (2) do children influence their own experience of ecological instability during early childhood, and if so what factors (e.g., physical health, social behavior) are most likely to affect these settings; (3)is early childhood instability associated with children's middle and late childhood health and well-being? Moreover, an important component of this research is to examine how these trends differ by children's socioeconomic status, which can speak to how ecological instability shapes the intergenerational transmission of inequality. In answering these questions, this study draws on two complementary sources of data: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW). These datasets allow for the close examination of changes in family structure, mothers' work characteristics, and children's extra-familial care because of the detailed collection of information during frequent interviews with families over early childhood. In addition, both datasets have objective and subjective measures of children's development, including their physical health, behavioral, and academic outcomes in middle and late childhood. The analytic plan uses latent class analysis (LCA) to identify the ecological instability experience over early childhood, and cross-lagged structural equation models and regression analysis to examine the role children play in influencing their ecological contexts and how early childhood instability may be associated with children's poorer health and well-being in middle and late childhood. Additional statistical techniques will be used to address selection bias and causal inference. This theoretically grounded study has important implications for policy. Understanding what types of instability put specific groups of families at risk for subsequent instability in other domains and which instability profiles are associated with poorer childhood health and well-being can inform policy and interventions targeting vulnerable children and families and speak to larger trends in population health and well-being inequalities.