Transient Domesticity and Drugs: Ethnography Informs a Nationwide Analysis

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application furthers ongoing research into the impact of drugs on domestic relationships in inner-city African American households and extends that work nationwide using demographic analyses. Drugs have been implicated in numerous social problems. Recent ethnographic research has identified their linkage to unstable female-male partnering (or transient domesticity) in the inner city. The family is the bedrock for child development. Understanding and addressing factors contributing to partnership instability could improve household functioning and thereby improve the life chances of children in these families. Prior demographic research has not analyzed this phenomenon due to a lack of a rich conceptual understanding of the behavior and due to limitations of available data. Data on household relationships were greatly improved with the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a large nationally representative sample of households followed over four years by the Census Bureau. In response to the latest reviewer comments, this second resubmission provides greater detail as to how each task will be completed and a clearer explanation and integration of the tasks. This study has two aims: AIM A. To analyze the impact that illicit drugs have on partnership relationships using a specially developed survey module. AIM B. To measure the extent that the partnering patterns associated with transient domesticity differ from (or are similar to) those prevailing among groups that are wealthier, less urban, not African American, and beyond New York City, using a nationally-representative sample (the SIPP). In the course of the study, the project will develop and field a SIPP Drugs Module. Responses by over 100 subjects currently enrolled in an ethnographic study will create a crosswalk supporting triangulation of findings from ongoing ethnographic work with the demographic analyses pro. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent ethnographic research has identified a linkage between drugs and unstable female-male partnering in the inner city, a phenomenon we refer to as transient domesticity. Unstable inner-city households disproportionately burden the nation's health care, social service, and criminal justice systems. Moreover, these distressed households are a primary location in which public health and other social problems continuously arise and where future generations will be socialized to reproduce these problems. The proposed project will provide initial indications of the prevalence of transient domesticity across the nation; identify the variation with race/ethnicity, urbanicity and economic circumstances; and raise questions about the extent that drug use may be involved. Most importantly, the project will develop and pilot test a SIPP Drugs Module that when fielded nationwide could explicitly measure the relationship between drugs and transient domesticity. This research should prove central to understanding the nature, location and extent of the problem possibly leading to tracking improvements in the future.