Funded Research
Children's Psychopathology: Trajectories, Risk Factors, and Effects of Services
Source: Spencer Foundation
Active: 09/01/2008 - 06/30/2010
Investigator(s):
Paul Morgan
Children who frequently engage in problem behaviors are at risk for a range of negative, long-term outcomes. Examples include dropping out of school, living in poverty, being unemployed, and being incarcerated. Yet the trajectories--and risk factors for those trajectories--of children's psychopathology are not well known. It is also not well known whether grade retention and special education--the two interventions most widely used by elementary schools--help reduce, or possibly increase, children's risk for psychopathology. This project has two goals: (1) to identify the trajectories and risk factors of children's teacher-reported attentional, externalizing, and internalizing problem behaviors; and to investigate whether these factors increase a child's likelihood of self-reporting feeling socially isolated, angry, or sad. (2) to estimate the effects of retention and special education on children's teacher-rated behaviors and self-reported feelings. The project's methodological features include (a) a large, longitudinal sample, (b) measures of many child-, family-, and school-level background characteristics, (c) measures of psychopathology with known psychometric properties, (d) both teacher-ratings and child self-reports, and (e) statistical techniques that help control for between-group variation in background characteristics. This project will contribute to the education field's attempts to help all children experience educational and societal opportunity.
