Understanding the Temporal Effects of Divorce on Youth Behaviors

了解离婚对青少年行为的时间影响

• 批准号: 7315235
• 负责人: JEREMY ARKES
• 金额: $ 9.84万
• 依托单位: RAND CORPORATION
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-08-03 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7315235
• 关键词: Achievement; Address; Adolescence; Adult; Affect; Age; Alcohol or Other Drugs use; Behavior; Child; Communities; Conflict (Psychology); Data; Divorce; Event; Family; Fertility; Gender; Heterogeneity; Hyperactive behavior; Individual; Life; Literature; Longitudinal Surveys; Marriage; Measures; Mediating; Modeling; Outcome; Outcome Measure; Parents; Problem behavior; Process; Relative (related person); Research; Risk Behaviors; Sampling; Sex Behavior; Students; Surveys; Teenagers; Time; Work; Youth; criminal behavior; divorce/separation; experience; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A significant amount of literature has examined negative outcomes for children associated with divorce. However, most research has treated divorce as a static event rather a dynamic event that may include years of conflict preceding the divorce. Thus, little research has examined the temporal effects of divorce-i.e., how the divorce process affects children in the years leading up to the divorce, at the time of the divorce, and over time after the divorce. Our objectives in the proposed work are to (1) examine these temporal effects of divorce on children's problem behavior (e.g., hyperactivity) and on teenagers' outcomes and risky behaviors (substance use, delinquency, sexual behavior, and fertility-related outcomes); and (2) examine whether gender, age, and pre-divorce parental conflict moderate the negative effects of divorce. The latter moderating factor can be informative on whether children from high-conflict families actually benefit from divorce. We will examine children from the Child and Young Adult Survey that accompanied the NLSY-79, and we examine teenagers from the NLSY of 1997 (NLSY-97). Most studies on the effects of parental divorce on children rely on the assumption that divorce is random across families. But, much research has shown that families that will divorce years later are different from families that will remain intact. A few studies use fixed-effects models to address this problem of heterogeneity possibly confounding the relationship between divorce and children's outcomes. However, these fixed-effect studies are not capturing the full effect of divorce, as the baseline measure may already capture much of the effect of the divorce process (e.g., the family conflict leading to the divorce). The few studies on the temporal effects of divorce are closer to capturing the full effects of divorce, but, they do not control for unobserved heterogeneity determining which families divorce. We will combine the positive features of these two types of models. In particular, we will address the unobserved heterogeneity issue by restricting the sample to children of families that experience a divorce (as the fixed-effect studies do). This changes the necessary assumption from "divorce is random across families" to "the timing of the divorce is random across families that experience a divorce." We can even eliminate the need for this new assumption by taking advantage of the panel surveys to estimate models with individual fixed effects. And to capture the full effects of divorce, we use a reference periods that is 3 to 5 years prior to the divorce for the analysis of teenagers and one that is 10 to 16 years prior to the divorce for the children's analysis. The proposed work should help the research community understand the temporal effects of parental divorce. In particular, the research will indicate how early before divorces kids may be impacted, how much the negative effects increase around the time of the divorce, and whether the divorce effects subside or persist over time. In addition, the research may be informative for whether children in high-conflict families do better with their parents divorcing or staying together.

描述（由申请人提供）：大量文献检查了与离婚有关的儿童的负面结果。但是，大多数研究都将离婚视为一个静态事件，而是一个充满活力的事件，可能包括离婚前几年的冲突。因此，很少的研究几乎没有研究离婚的时间影响，离婚过程如何影响离婚，离婚时以及离婚后的时间。我们在拟议的工作中的目标是（1）检查离婚对儿童问题行为（例如，多动症）以及青少年的结果和危险行为的这些时间影响（药物使用，犯罪，性行为和与生育有关的结果）； （2）检查性别，年龄和离婚前父母冲突是否会减轻离婚的负面影响。后一个调节因素可以提供有关高冲突家庭的儿童是否实际上从离婚中受益的信息。我们将检查来自NLSY-79的儿童和成人调查的儿童，并研究了1997年NLSY的青少年（NLSY-97）。关于父母离婚对儿童的影响的大多数研究都取决于离婚是整个家庭随机的假设。但是，许多研究表明，几年后将离婚的家庭与将保持完整的家庭不同。一些研究使用固定效应模型来解决这个异质性问题，可能会使离婚与儿童成果之间的关系混淆。但是，这些固定效应研究并未捕获离婚的全部影响，因为基线措施可能已经捕获了离婚过程的许多影响（例如，导致离婚的家庭冲突）。关于离婚时间影响的少数研究更接近捕获离婚的全部影响，但是，他们不能控制未观察到的异质性决定哪些家庭离婚。我们将结合这两种模型的积极特征。特别是，我们将通过将样本限制在经历离婚的家庭的孩子（如固定效应研究的情况下）来解决未观察到的异质性问题。这改变了“离婚是随机的家庭”到“离婚的时机是随机的，跨越离婚的家庭都是随机的。我们甚至可以通过利用面板调查来估算具有单个固定效果的模型来消除对这一新假设的需求。为了捕捉离婚的全部影响，我们使用离婚前3至5年的参考期来分析青少年，而离婚前10至16年进行了儿童分析。拟议的工作应有助于研究社区了解父母离婚的时间影响。特别是，该研究将表明离婚可能会在离婚之前有多大的影响，离婚期间的负面影响增加了多少，以及离婚的影响是否随着时间的流逝而消退还是持续存在。此外，这项研究对于高冲突家庭中的儿童是否会在父母离婚或在一起的情况下做得更好，这可能是有益的。