IBSS: The Levels and Timing of Family and School Influences on Children's Development

这一跨学科研究项目将确定儿童生活中两个最重要的环境-家庭和学校-的最佳水平和时间安排，以促进儿童从出生到成年的发展。 该项目将借鉴和贡献新的基础知识，跨越广泛的领域，包括发展心理学，社会学，人口学，教育社会学，教育心理学和经济学。 该项目将产生关于发展过渡的新见解，在整个早期生命过程中发展的连续性或不连续性，对经历发展连续性的儿童和经历不连续性的儿童给予同等重视。 通过加强对儿童、其家庭、学校和其他背景因素之间复杂互动的基本了解，该项目将为干预措施的设计提供信息，以解决一些儿童所经历的问题，并更有效地指导公共资金的使用，以最有效的时间进行干预。调查人员将重点关注三种方式来描述家庭和学校环境对儿童的影响，青年发展：敏感期、临界点和过渡期。敏感期是指发展中最容易受到环境影响的时期，也是预测未来功能最有效的时期。 临界点是情境影响对加速或递减回报产生影响的水平。 过渡是一个环境中的重大变化，可以影响个人的变化。 研究人员将分析来自六个国家纵向数据集的数据，这些数据集涵盖了早期生命过程的多个阶段，以及三个实验数据集，这将使他们能够得出关于因果关系的更强有力的结论。该团队将实施尖端的统计方法，坚持跨学科的最佳实践。 在整个项目中，研究人员将使用最好的测量方法来检查概念模型的每个部分，在数据集和队列中复制模型，作为增加结果信心的一种手段，利用最先进的方法来捕捉个体发展的动态性质，并考虑替代解释和规范，以增加因果推断的信心。 该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛获得支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will identify the optimal levels and timing of key aspects of the two most important contexts in children's lives -- their families and their schools -- for the development of children from birth through their transition to adulthood. The project will draw on and contribute new fundamental knowledge that bridges a broad range of fields, including developmental psychology, sociology, demography, sociology of education, educational psychology, and economics. The project will yield new insights regarding developmental transitions precipitate continuity or discontinuity in development across the early life course, with equal emphasis placed on children who experience continuity in development as on children who experience discontinuity. By enhancing basic understanding of the complex interactions among children, their families, their schools, and other contextual factors, the project will inform the design of interventions to address problems experienced by some children and more effectively guide the use of public dollars toward the most efficient times for interventions.The investigators will focus on three ways of characterizing the influence of family and school contexts on child and youth development: sensitive periods, tipping points, and transitions. Sensitive periods refer to the times in development that are most susceptible to contextual influence and are most effective for predicting future functioning. Tipping points are the levels at which a contextual influence affects accelerated or diminishing returns. Transitions are major changes in a context that can affect changes in the individual. The investigators will analyze data from six national longitudinal datasets that cover multiple stages of the early life course as well as three experimental datasets that will permit them to draw stronger conclusions about causal relationships. The team will implement cutting-edge statistical methods that adhere to the best practices across disciplines. Throughout the project, the investigators will use the best available measurements to examine each part of the conceptual model, replicate models across datasets and cohorts as a means of increasing confidence in results, leverage state-of-the-art methods to capture the dynamic nature of individual development, and consider alternative explanations and specifications in order to increase confidence in causal inferences. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.