Toward an Integrated Science of Research on Families Workshop Report (2011) / Chapter Skim
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5 Family Research Methods and Frameworks: Examples from the Study of Biomarkers, Child Health, and Econometric Methods
5 Family Research Methods and Frameworks: Examples from the Study of Biomarkers, Child Health, and Econometric Methods
Pages 57-72
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From page 57... ...
In addition, integrating biological and behavioral research typically requires close collaboration among investigators with different backgrounds, training, and methodological perspectives. It is important to note here that some domains of family research were beyond the scope of this single workshop.
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From page 58... ...
The research methodologies used in each of these areas are distinct, yet they share certain concerns and approaches that may offer a way of linking disciplines into multidisciplinary efforts. ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL STRESS SYSTEM: CONSIDERATIONS FOR FAMILY RESEARCH Environmental factors and life experiences affect human development, behavior, and health through their impact on physiological processes, such as activity of the biological stress response system.
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From page 59... ...
Whereas these studies document the impact of early experiences on children's HPA axis activity, they also illustrate some of the challenges of detecting effects in biomarker data. It is actually quite difficult to elicit a biological stress response among children in an experimental context, Kertes pointed out.
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From page 60... ...
Children high in social fear showed biological stress responses to the social challenges but not nonsocial ones, and the opposite was true for children high in nonsocial fear. Thus, said Kertes, research questions can be tailored to detect stress responses within the ethical constraints of mimicking children's everyday experiences.
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From page 61... ...
These methodological advances would facilitate the study of family effects on biological changes that influence risk for physical and mental disorders. Another important conceptual and methodological issue in stress research is that stress biomarkers are often not correlated highly or even at all with behavioral measures of stressful life events or perceived stress.
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From page 62... ...
Methodological advances that promote multilevel research are also needed because family effects on emotional and physical health have multiple modes of transmission. These include direct genetic effects and geneenvironment interplay, changes in gene expression initiated by the HPA axis or epigenetic mechanisms, and direct cultural or social modes of transmission.
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From page 63... ...
INSIDE FAMILY LIFE: MULTIPLE LAYERS OF INFLUENCE ON CHILDREN'S HEALTH AND WELL-BEING Children's health is rarely if ever the result of a single factor, said Barbara Fiese, professor of human development and family studies and director of the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is embedded in a familial, social, and cultural context that changes over time, including parents' beliefs and practices, neighborhoods, and access to health care, among others.
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From page 64... ...
The household routines needed to manage asthma include taking medication twice a day, avoiding such environmental allergens as tobacco smoke and pet allergens, engaging in daily physical activity, and getting a good night's sleep. At the same time, families with asthmatic children have to juggle home and work life, they move and experience job loss, they have babies and get divorced, they have to care for their elders, they experience domestic violence, they have psychiatric illnesses and suicidal ideation, they are involved in gang killings, and sometimes their children die.
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From page 65... ...
. The researchers also constructed an asthma impact interview to understand how this condition affects family life.
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From page 66... ...
. Families in the reactive category were about four times more likely to use emergency room care for their children's symptoms than families in the coordinated care category and eight times more likely than those in the family partnership category.
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From page 67... ...
ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ON UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF FAMILIES ON CHILD WELL-BEING One recent example of multidisciplinarity in family science is the increased attention across disciplines to causal inference in estimating family influences. Approaches from economics to estimate unbiased causal estimates in research have been influential in other disciplines.
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From page 68... ...
, which has been tracking a cohort of more than 12,000 young people who were between the ages of 14 and 22 in 1979, when they were first interviewed. Her regression analysis included a wide range of independent variables, including personal characteristics, like race, age, IQ, and self-confidence; family characteristics, such as parents' education and family income; community characteristics; and school characteristics.
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From page 69... ...
"It doesn't mean equal participation rates, but it does mean that if a girl wants to play and there are boys who are able to play, then either you need to have equal participation rates or you need to be able to make sure that girl can play." Title IX led to a major increase in girls participating in sports. Prior to Title IX, less than 5 percent of girls played high school sports compared with 50 percent of boys.
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From page 70... ...
States with a 10 percentage point greater increase in the statewide female athletic participation rate had an overall increase in educational attainment of 0.039 years, an increase in the probability of some postsecondary education of 1.3 percentage points, and an increase of 0.8 percentage points in the probability of obtaining at least a college degree. Since Title IX raised female participation by around 30 percent, these results would be multiplied by more than three to get the aggregate effects.
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From page 71... ...
For example, "how can we use this information to inform public service announcements, where we reach a broader audience, and how can we use this information to cast a wider net to communities at large? " Darlene Kertes said that some of the issues in family research are similar for behavioral and biological measures.
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