Press Release - September 6, 2002
University Park, PA -- Researchers at Penn State will team with colleagues at the University of North Carolina to conduct a five-year, $16.5 million study that will examine the biological, individual, family and community processes that lead to good or poor outcomes for rural children.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, will follow 1,400 children from selected rural counties in North Carolina and in Pennsylvania from infancy through the first three years of the children's lives in order to gauge their biological, emotional and social development. The research conducted at Penn State will include approximately 600 children from three Pennsylvania counties.
The study encompasses five projects being conducted by 23 investigators representing more than 10 disciplines, including education, psychology, human development, sociology, medicine and geography. In addition to Penn State and UNC-Chapel Hill, the study will include researchers from Duke University and the University of Virginia.
Penn State researchers will lead three of the study's five projects:
Dr. Ann C. Crouter, professor of human development and family studies and director of the Center for Work and Family Research, and Dr. Stacy Rogers, assistant professor of Sociology, will examine the impact that parents' changing occupational conditions have on family dynamics and children's psychosocial functioning. Crouter will also serve as the principal investigator for the Penn State portion of the entire study.
Dr. Linda M. Burton, professor of human development and family studies and sociology and director of the Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts, will direct a project that will appraise community characteristics and their effect on families' and children's lives.
Dr. Mark T. Greenberg, holder of the Edna Peterson Bennett chair in human development and family studies and director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development, will direct a project that investigates differences in children's temperaments in infancy, their ability to regulate/control behavior during their first three years of life and their impact on children's social-emotional development and readiness for school.
Co-principal investigators for the study are Dr. Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor and coordinator of the Early Childhood, Families and Literacy Program at UNC-Chapel Hill; and Dr. Martha Cox, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Developmental Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. Vernon-Feagans previously served as associate dean for research in Penn State's College of Health and Human Development before her appointment at UNC-Chapel Hill.
"We want to understand how community, employment, family economic resources, family contexts, parent-child relationships and individual differences in the children themselves interact over time to shape the development of competence in rural children during their first three years," Vernon-Feagans said. "Although this grant is funded for only five years, we hope the children will be followed as they make the transition to school in order to understand the risk and protective factors in early childhood that predict successful adjustment to schooling."
According to Cox, data collected from the study will have important
implications for national policy - "particularly for the services most
needed by these families, including Early Head Start and other early
childhood programs, physical and mental health services and parental
employment and training. In addition, results will provide the basis for
prevention programs in the preschool years for children and families at
risk for physical and mental health programs and later school failure."
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EDITORS: Dr. Crouter is at (814) 865-2647 or ac1@psu.edu.
This press release courtesy of Penn State's Department of Public Information