The Family Life Project, Phase I, September 2003 - September 2007

The purpose of this project is to study the early development of a group of children who are at risk regarding later successful adjustment and for whom we have little information: children living in rural, largely poor communities. A birth cohort of 800 children in three rural counties of North Carolina and 600 children in three rural counties of Pennsylvania were studied over the first 3 years of life. A multidisciplinary team investigated multiple levels of influences affecting the early development of these children. The research emphases of the component research projects include the following: Project I: Temperament: Emphasizes the development of child-related factors and how they predict preschool social-emotional and cognitive competence Project II: School Readiness: Emphasizes the pathways to and precursors of school readiness Project III: Family Process: Emphasizes how family processes mediate or moderate the effects of rural poverty on children Project IV: Work and Family: Emphasizes the impact of parents' occupational conditions on parenting, and, in turn, children's social, cognitive, emotional and linguistic development Project V: Ethnography: Emphasizes two components: an in-depth contextual appraisal of community characteristics a family ethnography with 72 families developmentally ahead of the cohort above to provide input to design and measurement This project used a cumulative risk model to examine the relation between social risk and children's executive functioning, language development and behavioral competence at 36 months. Using both the Family Process Model of development and the Family Investment Model of development, observed parenting was examined over time in relation to child functioning at 36 months. Different aspects of observed parenting were examined as mediators/moderators of risk in predicting child outcomes. Results suggested that cumulative risk was important in predicting all three major domains of child outcomes and that positive and negative parenting and maternal language complexity were mediators of these relations. Maternal positive parenting was found to be a buffer for the most risky families in predicting behavioral competence. In a final model using both family process and investment measures, there was evidence of mediation but with little evidence of the specificity of parenting for particular outcomes. Results demonstrate the importance of cumulative risk and parenting in understanding child competence in rural poverty and the implications for possible intervention strategies that might be effective in maximizing the early development of these children.

本项目的宗旨在于探究一组存在后期适应成功风险且信息匮乏的儿童群体——即生活在农村、贫困程度较高的社区中的儿童——的早期发展状况。项目对北卡罗来纳州三个农村县的800名儿童和宾夕法尼亚州三个农村县的600名儿童在生命的前三年进行了研究。一个跨学科团队调查了影响这些儿童早期发展的多层面因素。组成部分研究项目的重点研究内容包括以下几项：

项目一：气质：着重研究与儿童相关因素的发展及其对学龄前社会情绪和认知能力的预测。
项目二：入学准备：着重研究入学途径及其先兆。
项目三：家庭过程：着重研究家庭过程如何调节或缓和农村贫困对儿童的影响。
项目四：工作与家庭：着重研究父母的职业条件对育儿方式的影响，以及这种影响反过来如何作用于儿童的社会、认知、情绪和语言发展。
项目五：民族志：着重于两个组成部分：对社区特性的深入环境评估，以及针对72个在发展上超越该群体家庭的民族志研究，以提供设计及测量的输入。

该项目采用累积风险模型来审视社会风险与儿童在36个月时的执行功能、语言发展和行为能力之间的关系。利用家庭过程发展模型和家庭投资发展模型，研究人员在36个月时考察了观察到的育儿行为与儿童功能之间的关系。研究人员对不同方面的观察到的育儿行为进行了检验，以作为风险在预测儿童结果中的中介/调节因素。研究结果指出，累积风险对于预测儿童结果的三大主要领域至关重要，积极的育儿方式和母亲的言语复杂度是这些关系的中介。研究发现，积极的母亲育儿方式可以作为高风险家庭预测行为能力的一个缓冲器。在最终模型中，结合家庭过程和投资指标，存在中介作用的证据，但几乎没有关于育儿方式对特定结果特异性的证据。研究结果证明了累积风险和育儿方式在理解农村贫困儿童的胜任力以及对于可能有效提升这些儿童早期发展的干预策略的启示方面的重要性。