Childhood is generally defined as the period of life between birth and adulthood, but children can also be characterized by their stage of development, including prenatal, infant, toddler, school-age, pre-pubescent, and teen or adolescent. RAND research on children covers the prenatal period to age 18 and spans multiple research areas, including health, education, criminal justice, and safety.
Head-to-head trials of competing autism treatments are needed to identify which programs are superior and additional work should follow study participants long-term to further examine the effectiveness of treatments.
Researchers from the RAND Corporation and other institutions have begun pilot-testing a web-based tool designed to help parents and adult caregivers determine whether to seek urgent medical attention for a sick child with flu-like symptoms.
If prevention researchers build programs with developmentally relevant content, and provide this content in an engaging, confidential, and non-judgmental way, it can help middle school-aged children avoid alcohol.
The post-war trend of falling birth rates has been reversed across Europe. However, despite an increasing emphasis on family and fertility policies in Europe, this recent development involves social, cultural, and economic factors more than individual policy interventions.
Army children whose parents have deployed 19 months or more since 2001 score lower on standardized tests than other Army children whose parents have deployed for shorter periods of time.
Psychological problems experienced during childhood can have a long-lasting impact on an individual's life course, reducing people's earnings and decreasing the chances of establishing long-lasting relationships.
Children and spouses of military members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan report facing challenges as family relationships change and they assume more responsibility for household duties during deployment.
Using antibiotics to treat newly diagnosed acute ear infections among children is modestly more effective than no treatment, but comes with a risk of side effects.
A first-of-its-kind study examining the long-term economic consequences of childhood psychological disorders finds the conditions diminish people's ability to work and earn as adults, costing $2.1 trillion over the lifetimes of all affected Americans.
Children in military families may suffer from more emotional and behavioral difficulties when compared to other American youths, with older children and girls struggling the most when a parent is deployed overseas.
California can improve its early childhood education system in an era of fiscal crisis and lay the foundation for improving access and quality in the future when more resources are available.
School-based drug education programs for adolescents can have a long-term positive impact on sexual behavior in addition to curbing substance abuse.
Most adolescents referred to long-term group homes in Los Angeles County after being charged with a serious offense reported they were still involved with crime or drugs seven years later.
The first multi-dimensional effort to quantify the disparities faced by African-American and Latino boys and men in California across a broad spectrum of health and social factors provides a disquieting outlook for their lives.
Adolescents who have high levels of exposure to television programs that contain sexual content are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the following three years as their peers who watch few such shows.
The U.S. military should reassess its child care system to look for ways to make it better fit the needs of military families and more effectively meet recruitment, readiness and retention goals.
California's pioneering paid family leave program has largely failed to reach one of its major target groups. Few parents of children with serious chronic illnesses have used the program, despite having paid into the program through payroll withholdings, and the vast majority of these parents aren't even aware that the program exists.
More than half of California’s preschoolers attend center-based early care and education programs, but the children who have the most to gain from preschool frequently are those least likely to participate in the programs.
Amid cutbacks in school arts education funding, public and private organizations in six urban regions have collaborated to expand access to arts learning for children in and outside of public school.
Making a virginity pledge may help some young people postpone the start of sexual activity.
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2013 RAND Corporation. Last Modified: December 04, 2012 Site Feedback »
