Predictors and Consequences of Children's Social Competence Across Early and Midd

描述（由申请人提供）：早期没有良好发展社交和行为技能的儿童比社交技能较好的同龄人在以后的学业失败中面临更大的风险（Raver, 2002; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000）。研究表明，高质量的家庭和学校环境可能为预防幼儿的社会和行为障碍提供有希望的途径，从而提高他们的学业成绩。本研究将极大地推进关于构成社会能力的技能和行为的科学知识基础，并为儿童的家庭和学校环境对其社会、行为和学业成绩的协同效应提供令人信服的新证据。通过对NICHD早期儿童保育和青少年发展研究的现有数据集的分析，这项创新研究将通过以下方式产生新的知识：(1)利用从幼儿和青少年之间不同环境（家庭、学校、实验室）的众多受访者（家长、教师、儿童、观察者）收集的这些技能的多个维度来确定构成社会能力的技能和行为；(2)通过严格纠正观察到的家庭和儿童特征，对社会能力和成就之间的因果关系提供重要的估计；(3)单独或结合儿童家庭和学校环境的关键方面，加深我们对这些环境中存在的风险和保护因素的理解，并确定儿童最容易受到这些环境影响的情况。第一个目标是开发和测试基于从多个信息者收集的多个构式的儿童社会能力的理论知情测量模型，并使用结构方程模型（SEM）检查儿童早期和青春期的测量不变性。我们认为，社会能力最好被描述为一个单一的潜在结构，而不是多个结构，并且这个结构将随着时间的推移而稳定。第二个目标是利用扫描电镜中的自回归交叉滞后模型来确定社会能力与成就之间关系的方向。我们认为因果关系始于社会能力而非成就。第三个目标是描述家庭和学校中影响社会能力和成就发展的风险和保护因素，确定这些环境和结果之间的假设关系在某些年龄是否更强，并确定这些维度影响社会和学业成果的调节过程。我们假设儿童的社交和学术技能将来自家庭和学校经历的结合，这些经历协同作用产生积极的结果，这些环境将随着时间的推移对他们的社交结果产生不同的影响。第四个目标是检查睡眠参数与儿童预后之间的线性和非线性关系。我们认为，随着时间的推移，更好的睡眠习惯将与更好的社交和学术技能联系在一起。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children who do not have well-developed social and behavioral skills early on are at greater risk for later academic failure than their more socially skilled peers (Raver, 2002; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Research suggests that high-quality home and school environments may provide promising avenues for preventing social and behavioral difficulties among young children and thus for improving their academic achievement. The proposed study will significantly advance the scientific knowledge base about the skills and behaviors that comprise social competence and provide compelling new evidence about the synergistic effects of children's home and school environments on their social, behavioral, and academic outcomes. Through analysis of existing datasets from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, this innovative research will generate new knowledge by: (1) identifying the skills and behaviors that comprise social competence using multiple dimensions of these skills collected from numerous respondents (parent, teacher, child, observer) across settings (home, school, lab) between early childhood and adolescence; (2) providing vital estimates of the causal relations between social competence and achievement by rigorously correcting for observed family and child characteristics; (3) examining alone and in combination critical aspects of children's home and school environments to deepen our understanding of the risk and protective factors present in these environments and determine the situations in which children are most susceptible to these contexts. The first objective is to develop and test theoretically informed measurement models of children's social competence based on multiple constructs gathered from multiple informants and to examine measurement invariance across early childhood and adolescence using structural equation modeling (SEM). We propose that social competence may best be described as a single underlying construct rather than as multiple constructs and that this construct will be stable over time. The second objective is to determine the direction of the association between social competence and achievement using autoregressive cross-lagged models in SEM. We suggest that causal pathway begins with social competence rather than achievement. The third objective is to delineate risk and protective factors in both the home and school that influence the development of social competence and achievement, determine whether the hypothesized relations between these contexts and outcomes are stronger at certain ages, and identify the moderating processes by which these dimensions impact social and academic outcomes. We hypothesize that children's social and academic skills will derive from a combination of home and school experiences that work synergistically to produce positive outcomes and that these contexts will have differing effects on their social outcomes over time. The fourth objective is to examine linear and non-linear associations between sleep parameters and children's outcomes over time. We propose that better sleep practices will be associated with better social and academic skills over time. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed study will advance the scientific knowledge base about the skills and behaviors that comprise social competence from early childhood through adolescence and will generate novel evidence that can be readily translated into programs and practices that support positive development across this period. Findings will be especially applicable to prevention work due to our focus on the home and school processes that generate positive outcomes across domains. Finally, we will carry out the proposed research at a time when there are intensive debates about what "best practices" for children look like; the proposed research will inform these debates by investigating systematically which programs and practices work, for whom, and under what conditions.