Cultural Consonance, Toxic Stress, and Early Childhood Development in a Context of Poverty

文化和谐是指个人的信仰和行为在多大程度上符合更广泛的社会规范。人类学家长期以来一直对文化和谐的影响感兴趣，特别是与其缓冲个人免受逆境影响的能力有关。这种关系的一个有趣但研究不足的延伸是，一个人的文化和谐可能会影响其他依赖他们的人。这个项目通过调查父母文化和谐度高的孩子是否也能从逆境中得到缓冲来检验这一命题。它是在极端贫困的情况下这样做的，在那里，即使是微不足道的环境改善也可能对儿童的福祉产生重大影响。该项目有助于培训一名科学文化人类学研究生，向学术和非学术受众广泛传播其研究成果，并涉及合作伙伴关系，包括与政策专家的合作伙伴关系，以改善研究能力和基础设施。该项目由文化人类学项目和既定的激励竞争性研究项目(EPSCoR)共同资助。通过采访和问卷调查，研究人员从生活贫困的2至5岁儿童的照顾者及其子女那里收集数据。首先，他们将分析根据共同文化价值观生活的照顾者是否比其他照顾者更频繁地在孩子中促进刺激性活动和积极的纪律。为了研究这种联系，他们将从100名照顾者和他们的孩子那里收集数据，并使用严格的定性和定量方法进行分析。其次，研究人员将研究根据共同文化价值观生活的照顾者的孩子是否不太可能遭受发育迟缓。在这部分研究中，他们将研究1000名照顾者及其子女，对数据进行统计分析，并使用预测模型来确定缓冲贫困对儿童早期发展影响的文化因素。该项目对先前的理论做出了重要的扩展，以了解文化和谐对健康和福祉的直接和间接影响，并更全面地了解哪些和谐领域对此最重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Cultural consonance describes the extent to which individuals’ own beliefs and behaviors match the norms of broader society. Anthropologists have long been interested in the effects of cultural consonance, especially in relation to its ability to buffer individuals against adversity. One intriguing but under-studied extension of this relationship is that one person’s cultural consonance can affect others who depend on them. This project tests this proposition by investigating whether children of parents with high cultural consonance are also buffered from adversity. It does so in contexts of extreme poverty, where even marginal environmental improvements can have large effects on child well-being. The project contributes to training a graduate student in scientific cultural anthropology, disseminates its research findings broadly to academic and non-academic audiences, and involves collaborative partnerships, including with policy experts, that improve research capacity and infrastructure. This project is jointly funded by the Cultural Anthropology Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Through interviews and questionnaires, the researchers gather data from caregivers of children ages 2 to 5 who live in poverty and from their children. First, they will analyze if caregivers who live according to shared cultural values promote stimulating activities and positive discipline among their children more frequently than other caregivers. To study this association, they will collect data from 100 caregivers and their children and analyze them using rigorous qualitative and quantitative methods. Second, the researchers will examine if the children of caregivers who live according to shared cultural values are less likely to suffer developmental delays. For this part of the research, they will study 1,000 caregivers and their children, analyze the data statistically, and use predictive models to determine the cultural factors that buffer the effect of poverty on early childhood development. The project contributes important extensions of prior theory to understand the direct and indirect effects of cultural consonance on health and well-being and a more holistic understanding of which domains of consonance are most important for doing so.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.