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Child Policy Research Projects
Below are examples of current RAND research projects related to children and families, grouped by topic area.
Best Practices
Promising Practices Network on Children, Families and Communities
Rebecca Kilburn
The Promising Practices Network is a Web-based project that has been underway at RAND since 2001. The PPN website is a unique resource that offers credible, research-based information on what works to improve the lives of children and families. Sometimes referred to as a "best practices" site or a "model program" site, PPN is both of those things and much more. In addition to providing information on Programs that Work, PPN also links to additional research information in all areas related to child well-being, including their physical and mental health, academic success, and economic security. These additional resources include Research in Brief, Resources and Tools and Expert Perspectives. To promote successful implementation of best practices and model programs, PPN also screens and posts evidence-based information on effective Service Delivery. In addition to the breadth of information PPN provides, visitors can rely on PPN to provide information that has met our high standards for scientific credibility, objectivity, and clarity.
Visit the PPN website at http://www.promisingpractices.net
Child Health
Access and Utilization Study
Mark Schuster
This study will collect qualitative information (through focus groups with adolescents and parents of adolescents) to help understand and clarify the reasons why adolescents do or don't go to the doctor for well-adolescent visits, to collect information on the type of health information adolescents would like to receive during their well-adolescent visits, and to examine the best way to provide health information to adolescents. In addition, the project will describe potential structural changes or incentives that could be implemented to facilitate and/or increase well-adolescent visits. The findings from this project will help WellPoint/Blue Cross of California to develop programs or to modify delivery of services to make it easier to access services and to encourage visits to the doctor for well-adolescent visits.
Analysis of Teamwork in Labor and Delivery
Donna Farley
This study will explore the underlying relationships among MedTeams™ approach to teamwork training, interventions to improve teamwork, and observed effects on safety outcomes for mothers and infants.
Assessing the Utilization of Outdoor Gym Installations in Public Parks and Their Impact on Physical Activity Among Park Users
Deborah Cohen
The Trust for Public Lands in Los Angeles (TPL) believes that access to parks, while important, is not enough to address health issues related to inactivity. This project is evaluating the effectiveness of Family Fitness Zones—outdoor gym installations in public parks—in increasing physical activity and the well-being of park users.
Assessment of the School Health Nursing Program
Anita Chandra
The School Health Nursing Program (SHNP) provides important health services to children in their schools in the District of Columbia (DC). This project is an assessment of how the SHNP program uses its resources to provide health services to students in Washington, D.C., public schools, with specific attention to access to care, quality of services, and barriers to care.
Away from Home and Out of School
Deborah Cohen
This study is a follow-on to a previous study, Community Characteristics and Physical Activity Among Adolescent Girls, and is being conducted to determine if a relationship exists between individuals' interactions with their environments away from home and their total physical activity and body mass index. This study will follow the same girls from the previous study and identify where they go when they are not in school or home by using portable global positioning system (GPS) units. GPS will be combined with accelerometry and self-reports of food purchases and consumption so that the context in which physical activity and eating occurs can be determined. The baseline study found associations between neighborhood characteristics, such as parks and playgrounds, and physical activity, but could not determine if girls were active in these settings or whether increased levels of physical activity were due to community norms. Findings of this study will be useful to inform future community and population level interventions to promote healthy eating, active living, and obesity control.
Best Practices in Immunizing Low-Income Adolescents
Katherine Harris
This study will identify a set of best practices for increasing the use of recommended vaccines by low-income adolescents and develop recommendations for adapting and expanding best practices for this population.
Birthweight Effects in Infancy and Early Childhood
Brian Finch and Ashlesha Datar
This project examines the effects of birth weight on children's cognitive, developmental and health outcomes during infancy and early childhood using panel data on a nationally representative cohort of births in the U.S.
Capitation Adjustment for Children with Special Health Care Needs
Hao Yu
The study will use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to examine the ability of risk-adjustment models to limit the incentives for risk selection by medical plans serving children, especially those with special health care needs.
Children's National Medical Center (CNMC) Community Health Needs Assessment
Anita Chandra and Carole Roan Gresenz
RAND will assist the Children's National Medical Center in developing a community benefits program that will allocate resources and implement appropriate health care interventions for D.C. children and families.
Developing an In Vivo Adherence Intervention for Adolescents with Asthma
Elizabeth D'Amico
This project will develop acceptability, feasibility, and pilot data for a larger clinical trial of an innovative intervention to overcome barriers to treatment adherence and improve health outcomes for adolescents with moderate and severe asthma.
Evaluating the Impact of Playground Renovations on Physical Activity Behavior Among Youth
Deborah Cohen
This project will evaluate both the process used by the Trust for Public Land to renovate three parks in San Francisco and the impact of those renovations on physical activity behavior among youth.
Healthy Living: A Community-Academic Partnership to Address Disparities in Obesity Among Youth
Mark Schuster
In collaboration with Los Angeles Unified School District and key community stakeholders, this is a study to design and pilot test an intervention aimed at promoting healthy eating and physical activity among an ethnically diverse sample of middle school youth. Based on our formative research, we developed an intervention for middle school students called Students for Nutrition and Exercise (SNaX). The main goal of SNaX is to empower LAUSD 7th graders to make better food choices and engage in physical activity, both inside and outside of school. SNaX aims to promote healthy eating with environmental school cafeteria changes (provision of sliced fruit and free chilled filtered water, posting of point-of-sale food nutrition signage), student-led advocacy and education about nutrition and physical activity, and school-wide activities to promote awareness of SNaX and its messages. We are now planning a randomized controlled trial of the intervention's effectiveness at promoting healthy eating and physical activity among LAUSD youth.
Neighborhood & Health Care Effects in Childhood Asthma
Marielena Lara
A collaborative effort with the Alliance Against Pediatric Asthma coalition in Puerto Rico, this project is extending asthma management interventions to another community and identifying ways to make the program sustainable. This study performs secondary analyses of geo-coded data from the surveys for the Allies Against Asthma study on two housing projects. The analyses will explore the risk factors associated with asthma prevalence, and it will also determine whether geographic clusters of high asthma prevalence and morbidity occur in the neighborhoods studied and, if so, whether social and physical neighborhood characteristics are associated with this clustering effect.
Private Insurance and Prescription Outcomes for Children
Dana Goldman
This study will examine the influence of prescription drug cost-sharing (out-of-pocket expense) on adherence to drug therapy by children with chronic illnesses who are covered by private health insurance.
School Food Policies and BMI
Roland Sturm
An examination of how state policies on competitive food (e.g., vending machines) and how food environments inside and nearby schools influence the food purchases, consumption, and body mass index of elementary school children.
Understanding Sex Education Programming in Schools
Elizabeth D'Amico
This project plans to investigate and clarify the most effective prevention approaches for reducing pregnancy and intentions to have sexual intercourse and increasing condom use and perceptions of safe-sex self-efficacy. The study will conduct focus groups at three schools in LAUSD to understand the needs of the community and their perceptions of effective sex education prevention programming.
Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco
Brief Substance Use Intervention for Youth in Teen Court
Elizabeth D'Amico
This 4.5 year study will adapt and test an efficacious group intervention among teens who have committed a first-time alcohol or other drug misdemeanor offense with the goal of reducing alcohol and drug use and related consequences among this population. This study will build on an existing relationship between RAND and the Santa Barbara Probation Department and the Santa Barbara Teen Court system.
Classroom Drug Prevention
Phyllis Ellickson
An evaluation of the long-term results from ALERT Plus, a combination middle school and high school drug-prevention curriculum that aims to sustain the positive effects of Project ALERT currently used in middle schools.
Disparities in Alcohol Problems and Access to Care
Roland Sturm
At present, there is no study that examines the actual spatial distribution of alcohol outlets around residences and across neighborhoods. This study on the epidemiology of alcohol-related problems will integrate data in California from multiple sources to investigate the environmental correlates of underage drinking and adult problem drinking.
Drug Use, Social Context, and HIV Risk in Homeless Youth
Joan Tucker
The goal of this project is to understand the social context of drug use and risky sex among homeless youth. Homeless youth are estimated to be 6-12 times more likely to become infected with HIV than home-based youth. Homeless youth have high rates of drug use and are embedded in social networks that include regular drug users. Risky sexual behavior, the primary route of infection in this population, is common. Understanding the social context of drug use and risky sex among homeless youth is critical to intervention efforts aimed at reducing the spread of HIV in this growing population. Using data from a probability sample of homeless youth in Los Angeles County, this study takes an innovative and multifaceted approach to understanding the personal networks of homeless youth, and how the composition and structure of these networks may influence substance use and sexual behavior in this vulnerable population.
Enhancing Prevention Capacity with Developmental Assets and Getting to Outcomes Programs
Matt Chinman
This project uses a community-based participatory research model to assess a combination of two SAMHSA "Best Practice" programs (Getting to Outcomes and Developmental Assets) designed to prevent drug and alcohol use among youth. In a 5-year randomized controlled trial with 12 community-based prevention coalitions in Maine, the project will assess the extent to which the two programs enhance the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of individual coalition members and improve the quality of prevention performance.
Friendship Networks and Alcohol Use in Adolescence and Young Adulthood
Michael Pollard
This project performs secondary analysis of longitudinal Ad Health data, to investigate how friendship networks and other social factors influence alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood. A key innovation in the proposed study is the use of longitudinal social network analysis to examine alcohol use.
Modeling the Effect of Cigarette Advertising on Adolescent Smoking
Bill Shadel
This randomized controlled laboratory experiment will manipulate the exposure of never-smoking middle school adolescents to cigarette advertising in order to model the mediating and moderating processes that underlie the observed association between cigarette advertising/marketing and adolescent smoking.
Project CHOICE: A Brief Voluntary Alcohol and Drug Intervention for Middle School Youth
Elizabeth D'Amico and Joan Tucker
The overall objective of this 5-year longitudinal study is to conduct a more rigorous test of Project CHOICE, the only voluntary intervention tested for middle school youth, in a larger, ethnically diverse school population. A secondary objective is to better understand who participates in Project CHOICE, and how participants and changes in the school environment may influence the attitudes and behaviors of nonparticipants. The efficacy of Project CHOICE, which was developed at RAND, was demonstrated in a small quasi-experimental study in one school setting.
The Social Context of Smoking in Adolescence and Young Adulthood
Joan Tucker
The overall goal of this project is to advance the understanding of peer influences on youth smoking by using social network analysis to investigate how friendship networks are related to patterns of smoking over time. Using longitudinal friendship network data from the National Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this project is addressing the following specific aims: 1) To determine the extent to which friendship networks influence smoking (influence effects) and smoking influences friendship selection (selection effects), and whether these associations differ across key demographic groups; 2) To investigate how different levels of peer influence are concurrently and prospectively associated with youth smoking behavior, and to explore whether these associations are moderated by key network structure characteristics; and 3) To identify adolescents who are more resilient versus vulnerable to different levels of pro-smoking peer influences, focusing on characteristics from four domains: personal factors; school factors; family factors; and neighborhood factors.
Education
An Evaluation of the Cognitive Tutor Algebra 1 Program
John Pane and Rita Karam
The project will use randomized controlled trials to study the wide-scale effectiveness of Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutor Algebra I, a technology-based algebra curriculum. The primary research objective is to measure the curriculum's effects on students' mathematics achievement. Secondary objectives include measuring effects on the mathematics achievement of racial/ethnic minorities and English learners, effects on student confidence and attitudes about mathematics, and contextual factors that affect implementation and effectiveness. Middle schools and high schools in U.S. public school districts with broad demographic and geographic diversity will be randomly assigned to use the curriculum or to continue using the school's current algebra curriculum.
An Evaluation of Cohesive School Leadership Systems and the State Role in Improving School Leadership
Catherine Augustine and Gabriella Gonzelez
RAND will work with The Wallace Foundation to test the validity of its cohesive school leadership system hypothesis and examine the state role in improving school leadership through a comparative case-study analysis. We will examine the progress, challenges, and obstacles in Wallace-funded states and districts that have been deemed to have successfully built cohesive leadership systems. We will also examine the role of the state in improving school leadership, by studying states that have successfully created cohesive leadership systems, as well as states that have not. We will analyze whether data from various levels of the system (state, district, and school) suggest patterns that are consistent with Wallace's cohesive leadership system hypothesis. That is, whether the sites have implemented a cohesive leadership system as envisioned by Wallace. RAND also proposes to collect opinions from individuals at each level of the system regarding the extent to which they perceive influences among state and district efforts, principal practices, and teaching and learning outcomes.
An Evaluation of the New Leaders for New Schools Program
Susan Gates and Laura Hamilton
This study is a four-year project that will provide both a formative and a summative evaluation of the New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS) program, its theory of action, and its implementation. The evaluation is designed to achieve several objectives, including providing evidence of whether the program has been successful in terms of both short- and long-term goals; identifying factors that foster or hinder the successful implementation of the NLNS Program; promoting an understanding of the many internal and external factors that need to be aligned in order to successfully reform the culture of schools and improve student learning. To complement the broad-based data analyses and qualitative data gathering at the district level, we will a limited number of in-depth nested case studies that will provide information on the actions of principals, principal and teacher attitudes toward the NLNS program, and perceived barriers to, as well as facilitators of, effective action. We will focus these case studies in a subset of NLNS districts in order to conduct a deep study of leadership at a few key sites.
An Evaluation of the Step by Step Program
Cathy Stasz
Open Society Institute's Step by Step program introduces child-centered teaching methods in preschools as a way to promote and develop democratic principles. Step by Step is operating in 30 countries, mainly through NGOs. OSI is interested in assessing SbS's reach and sustainability and in understanding what factors or conditions contribute to sustainability. This research and development project involves the design of a web-based survey of SbS Country Directors (technical specifications and content) which will be administered by OSI. RAND is also providing technical assistance to SbS in developing methods for costing program services. RAND will analyze the survey, and also conduct selected interviews with some Country Directors to address three broad questions: How widespread is the program's reach in each country? To what extent has the SbS methodology changed teachers' practices? What factors support the growth and sustainability of SbS? OSI will carry out any future survey administrations. The project is mainly of interest to OSI.
Identifying Threshold Levels of Structural and Process Quality
Vi-Nhuan Le and Claude Setodji
The cumulative evidence of research on early childhood care and children's development consistently finds that higher-quality care is predictive of a range of positive developmental outcomes for children, including improved language development, cognitive functioning, social competence, and emotional adjustment. This has led many states to attempt to improve the availability of high-quality early childhood care through a tiered quality rating system. Under this system, states define thresholds or cut-off points across various dimensions of quality, and provide different amounts of reimbursement to providers depending on their compliance with the quality standards. The results of the study will give policymakers a better indication of which specific cut-off points discriminate among different levels of child outcomes. This will help inform sensible approaches to differential reimbursement strategies.
Rethinking Public Education
Megan Beckett
This project involves a synthesis of the literature on out-of-school-time (OST) programs and their effectiveness and costs. The goal is to provide information to decisionmakers deciding if and how to allocate additional resources to improve the future educational and other outcomes of its population via different mechanisms (including OST programs).
Families and Economic Security
Paid Family Leave Insurance Program
Mark Schuster
A study investigating the impact of California's new Paid Family Leave Insurance (PFLI) Program, which took effect in July 2004. The law is the first in the country to go beyond the 1993 federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) by guaranteeing partial salary during leave for family illness, including chronic illness in children. In the baseline study, investigators surveyed parents of chronically ill children in the UCLA (California) and Northwestern (Illinois) medical systems, prior to July 2004. They explored parents' need for and use of leave, as well as perceived effects of leave and other issues. The research team is collecting follow-up data to assess whether PFLI has changed the use of or effects of leave in California compared to Illinois. Directly assessing the impact of a first in the nation state health policy law should aid in determining the value of and barriers to replication in other states.
International
U.S.-Born Children in the U.S.-Mexico Migration System
Michael Rendall
This project quantifies and describes the counter-stream of U.S.-citizen children emigrating to become residents of Mexico, and estimates their return migration to the U.S. between childhood and young adulthood.
Mental Health and Treatment
Assessment of the Adolescent Therapeutic Community Treatment Process
Maria Orlando Edelen
This exploratory/developmental project seeks to improve measurement of adolescent therapeutic community treatment processes by refining the self-report Dimensions of Change Instrument and counselor-report Counselor Assessment of Treatment Engagement and by examining the psychometric properties and preliminary validity evidence for the two measures. The project was transferred to RAND from Brown University.
Biomarkers of Stress and Health for Los Angeles Children (LAFANS Wave 2)
Glenn Melnick and Narayan Sastry
This project adds a collection of biomarkers of stress and health for children aged 0-17 to an ongoing longitudinal study of children, families and neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
Mental Health of Gifted Children
Laurie Martin
An examination of the mental health of gifted children, assessing whether they have higher rates of mental disorders than children who are not gifted; whether giftedness confers mental health advantages at any point in the life span, and whether gifted individuals with specific learning disabilities are at increased risk for mental disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation/attempts.
Neighborhood and Family Effects on Stress and Health (LAFANS Wave 2)
Narayan Sastry
We plan to collect biomarkers of stress and health status for all children in the LAFANS sample. Analyses will examine the effects of neighborhood and family enviornments children's health. A particular focus will the experience of stress and its psychological and physical consequences.
Violence
Aiding Students Exposed to Violence
Dana Schultz
This project will continue ongoing work with the Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS) program, which was developed by RAND and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The study will include: (1) an adaptation of CBITS for use by regular school staff, such as school counselors, in the average middle school setting, (2) a national expansion of CBITS and expertise in implementation and evaluation of trauma-focused programs in conjunction with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and (3) process and outcome evaluations of the implementation of CBITS for youth in foster care within the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Safe Start Evaluation: Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence
Lisa Jaycox
An evaluation of 15 programs funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that use evidence-based interventions to ameliorate the negative effects of domestic violence, community violence, and direct abuse on children ages 0 to 18. The programs take a variety of different forms, with some providing services to children only while others serve both children and their families or primary care givers. The programs are targeted to various exposure levels of domestic violence, including exposure to community violence and experience of direct abuse.
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