Integrating contextual, proximal, and individual risks for child conduct problems

描述（由申请人提供）：研究已经证实，多层的病因风险，包括个人遗传风险、近端环境经历（如父母和家庭关系特征）和社区环境（如社区劣势、社会组织和接触社区暴力），会影响儿童行为问题的发展(CP；攻击性和违反规则的行为，包括可诊断的和亚阈值行为障碍)。然而，到目前为止，我们对儿童CP的遗传和环境风险之间的相互作用，或近端风险在这种关系中可能发挥的作用知之甚少。当前的应用程序概述了一种新颖而独特的研究设计，旨在做到这一点。特别是，我们将对500个中低收入的双胞胎孩子家庭进行抽样，这些家庭居住在一系列弱势社区环境之一（即，从中等到极端弱势）。这种“有风险”的双胞胎抽样策略在背景风险研究方面比目前的流行病学双胞胎研究取得了重大进展，因为这些样本包含相对较少的有风险家庭。因此，现有的双胞胎研究通常无法有意义地探索环境风险作为儿童结局的病因调节因素的作用。然后，我们将通过深入的评估来增强我们创新的抽样方法，包括对双胞胎及其父母的心理和行为概况的综合评估，对亲子和家庭互动的录像，评估社区暴力暴露的访谈，双胞胎老师完成的问卷调查，以及对家庭邻居的人口普查跟踪。我们还将收集一个（不相关的）社区举报人样本，以报告每个家庭社区的社会组织和犯罪情况。最先进的行为遗传分析将检查环境风险因素（单独或与近端风险因素结合）如何调节儿童CP的遗传易感性。这种创新的抽样和设计策略将使我们第一次有意义地整合遗传、近端和环境风险因素，这些因素被认为是儿童CP发展的基础。有可能极大地促进我们对儿童行为问题根源的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research has confirmed that multiple layers of etiological risk, including individual genetic risk, proximal environmental experiences (e.g., parenting and family relationship characteristics), and neighborhood context (e.g., neighborhood disadvantage, social organization, and exposure to community violence), influence the development of children's conduct problems (CP; aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors comprising diagnosable and sub-threshold Conduct Disorder). To date, however, we little insight into the interplay between genetic and contextual risks for child CP, or the role that proximal risks may play in this relationship. The current application outlines a novel and unique research design intended to do just this. In particular, we will sample 500 middle-to-low income child twin families that reside in one of a range of disadvantaged neighborhood contexts (i.e., from moderately to extremely disadvantaged). This "at-risk" twin sampling strategy constitutes a significant advance over current epidemiological twin studies in regards to studies of contextual risk, as such samples contain relatively few at-risk families. As a result, extant twin studies are typically unable to meaningfully explore the role of contextual risk as an etiological moderator of child outcome. We will then augment our innovative sampling approach with an in-depth assessment battery that includes comprehensive assessments of the twins' and the parents' psychological and behavioral profiles, videotaped parent-child and family interactions, interviews assessing exposure to community violence, questionnaires completed by the twins' teachers, and census tracking of the family's neighborhood. We will also collect an (unrelated) neighborhood informant sample to report on social organization and crime in each family's neighborhood. State-of-the-art behavioral genetic analyses will then examine both how contextual risk factors, both alone and in combination with proximal risk factors, moderate genetic predispositions for child CP. This innovative sampling and design strategy will allow us to meaningfully integrate, for the first time, the genetic, proximal, and contextual risk factors thought to underlie the development of child CP, and accordingly, has the potential to significantly advance our understanding of the origins of child conduct problems.