Funded Projects

This project looks at 18 years in the history of a group of disadvantaged, inner city children, and seeks to determine whether a special pre-school intervention with parent involvement, education, and social support had lasting effects. Specifically, the research will compare college attendance, employment experiences, and quality of life at age 23 for those who participated in Chicago's Parent-Center Program as pre-schoolers versus a control group of youth who did not participate. The research involves data collection via young adult interviews, justice system records, welfare service records, and documentation of college attendance and completion. The analysis will subject to statistical models different measures of intensity of participation in the pre-school program and measures of the different pathways that lead to adult outcomes, and then determine the benefits of the initial intervention against its costs.

Overcoming Disadvantage: Mode of High School Exit as a Turning Point in the Lives of Urban Youth

This project will examine four pathways of transition from high school into adulthood for urban youth. These pathways are: high school dropouts with no further schooling, dropouts with GED completion, high school graduates with no postsecondary enrollment and high school graduates who enrolled in college. The researchers will conduct in-depth, qualitative interviews with 80 young adults from low-income families selected from an ongoing panel of Baltimore youth. The goal of the project is to identify sources of resilience in low-income urban youth's lives.

Preparing Students for a Diverse Democracy

The focus of this study is on enhancing new social and cognitive skills for student learning in areas important for living and working in a diverse society. The study will test the link between students' thinking, social development and changes in democracy outcomes (attitudes, values and behavior). The study proposes a multi-method approach to address the central research questions and to seek multiple ways of understanding how interaction with diverse peers (informal and facilitated through campus initiatives) plays a role in preparing college students for a diverse democracy.

This page last modified March 8, 2000 (kj)