Research Projects:

Evaluation of Promising Models and Delivery Approaches to Child Care Provider Training

Early Reading First Evaluation

The Efficacy of Building Language for Literacy and Core Knowledge to Promote School Readiness

Preventing Child Neglect in High-Risk Mothers

Reading First (in Louisiana)

Baby/Child Library

Community Child Health Research in Washington, DC

Early Childhood Education: Effects on Adult Adaptation
Intergenerational Pathways to Competence in Minority Families
Louisiana Early Childhood Development Programs (LA4) Pre-Kindergarten: Program Evaluation and Research
Predicting and Preventing Neglect in Teen Mothers

Title: Intergenerational Pathways to Competence in Minority Families

Co-PIs: Frances Campbell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Craig Ramey
Primary Funding Agency: MCHB
Abstract: This study is to examine longitudinally the factors associated with the attainment of vocational success, supportive parenthood, and the adoption of healthy life style within a sample of minority adults born into low-income families. The sample, 96% African American, consists of 170 individuals to be assessed with aged 26 ? 30 years. One goal of the study will be to learn the extent to which early childhood educational intervention disassociated with better adult adaptation in these individuals, all of whom took part as young children in randomized trials of early childhood education, the Abecedarian Project and Project CARE. Predictors of successful adult outcomes will include early family factors, early intervention, cognitive development, academic success, educational attainment, and avoidance of problem behaviors. A second goal will be to explore intergenerational effects on children born to the target adults. For participant?s children aged 3 and up, cognitive and socioemotional outcomes will be assessed. Based on current information, at least 100 eligible children are expected. Extant data collected throughout the early childhood and primary school years of the randomized trials cover the current adults and their parents through age 8. Parent and adolescent data were collected on participants and parents in both studies at age 12, and for the Abecedarian study alone, at age 15 and age 21 as well. Significant educational and academic benefits related to early intervention were still seen for Abecedarian participants in young adulthood, but it was too early fully to describe the range of adult adaptation they would display. New data for this study will describe the adult adaptation of the original children, assessed at a stage when they have completed formal education and are establishing careers and families of their own. Including the CARE participants in this research will expand the number of available adult cases sufficiently to permit the testing of complex predictive models describing development across 3generations. Age-21-22 data will be collected on CARE cases through a telephone survey, afterwards, they will be re-recruited for the adult phase. Adult outcome variables will include educational and employment status, economic self-sufficiency, constructive community involvement, family stability, parenthood, measures of healthy life-style, and mental health. Moderators may include crime, substance abuse, and deceptions of racism. Intellectual and academic functioning and the self-concept may be mediators of treatment effects. Procedures will include interviews, completion of psychological inventories and ratings, and for children, standardized intellectual and academic measures, parent and teacher ratings and home visits.