Early Causal Risk Factors for Delinquency: Quasi-Experimental Test

犯罪的早期因果风险因素：准实验测试

• 批准号: 7889868
• 负责人: Benjamin B Lahey
• 金额: $ 28.29万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-04 至 2014-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7889868
• 关键词: 13 year old; 9 year old; Address; Adolescence; Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Behavior; Characteristics; Child; Childhood; Chronic; Cognitive; Communicable Diseases; Data; Development; Environmental Risk Factor; Exposure to; Family; Female; Financial cost; Foundations; Future; Genetic; Goals; Human; Imprisonment; Infant; Knowledge; Life; Longitudinal Studies; Longitudinal Surveys; Low Birth Weight Infant; Mediating; Mediation; Mental disorders; Methods; Modeling; Neurocognitive Deficit; Nuclear Family; Parenting behavior; Parents; Participant; Peer Pressure; Pregnancy; Premature Birth; Prevention; Prevention program; Preventive Intervention; Primary Prevention; Prospective Studies; Psyche structure; Research; Risk; Risk Factors; Role; Sampling; Science; Siblings; Surgeon; Temperament; Testing; Toddler; Violence; Violent injury; Woman; Youth; alcohol consumption during pregnancy; anti social; base; boys; control trial; cost; design; deviant; early childhood; early onset; early starter; expectation; girls; high risk; improved; infancy; infant temperament; innovation; interest; life course persistent; male; maternal cigarette smoking; offspring; peer influence; perpetrators; physical conditioning; prenatal; prenatal exposure; prenatal risk factor; prevent; prospective; public health relevance; skills; suicidal morbidity

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescent delinquents not only harm their victims, they are at high risk for a host of serious mental and physical health consequences. Because it is very difficult to reduce antisocial behavior after it begins, there is great interest in developing effective methods of preventing delinquency before it starts. Because the onset of antisocial behavior is often in the toddler years, however, early prevention must begin very early in life. Therefore, we need to rigorously evaluate the hypothesized risk factors for delinquency that operate during pregnancy and infancy (e.g., prenatal exposure to substances and parenting during infancy). Crucially, the field must be able to distinguish between non-causal correlates of delinquency and causal risk factors because only causal risk factors are useful targets for prevention. Unfortunately, the field's current understanding of early causal risk factors for delinquency may be seriously flawed for many reasons. Most importantly, the designs used in nearly all previous studies did little to distinguish causal factors from non- causal correlates. Innovation: The field must move beyond traditional "between-family" designs that compare children from unrelated families and thereby confound hypothesized risk factors with the myriad correlated factors that differ between families. Instead, we propose to adapt the powerful quasi-experimental method of sibling-comparison analysis developed for econometric research to test our hypotheses. This approach compares siblings within nuclear families who vary on the risk factor to determine if they differ in delinquency, greatly minimizing genetic and environmental confounding to provide rigorous tests of causal hypotheses. Approach: We propose to analyze longitudinal data on the offspring of a U.S. national sample of 4,926 women. For each putative risk factor during pregnancy and infancy, we propose to conduct sibling-comparison analyses to test key causal hypotheses: Does each putative causal risk factor influence risk for adolescent delinquency (and do so differently for youth on different developmental trajectories)? Do these early risk variables indirectly influence adolescent delinquency through their influence on childhood conduct problems? Does each putative early causal risk factor influence which children with high levels of childhood conduct problems advance to adolescent delinquency (versus ceasing to be antisocial)? Furthermore, in order to strengthen the empirical basis for understanding the mechanisms of early risk variables, we will determine the extent to which any effects of early risk factors are different for girls and boys and are mediated or moderated by other risk variables in later childhood. Specifically, do early risk factors make some children more vulnerable to inadequate parenting in later childhood and deviant peer influence during adolescence? Alternatively, can adaptive parenting and lack of peer pressure mitigate early risks? PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Adolescent delinquency harms victims and greatly increases risk in the perpetrators for incarceration, suicide, death and injury from violence, chronic and infectious diseases, and mental disorders. Because the human and financial costs of violence and delinquency are enormous, the U.S. Surgeon General identified reduction of delinquency as a high priority. Because delinquency is very difficult to treat once it develops, cost-effective early primary prevention programs are needed to stop delinquency before it begins. We need a full understanding of modifiable factors during pregnancy and infancy that are likely to be causal risk factors for early-onset delinquency to identify targets for new controlled trials of innovative early preventive interventions.

描述（由申请人提供）：青少年犯罪不仅损害了受害者，而且对严重的身心健康后果的高风险。因为在开始后很难减少反社会行为，因此在开发有效的拖欠方法开始之前，人们非常兴趣。但是，由于反社会行为的发作通常是在幼儿时代的，因此，早期预防必须在生命的早期开始。因此，我们需要严格评估怀孕和婴儿期间运作的违法行为的假设危险因素（例如，在婴儿期暴露于物质和育儿）。至关重要的是，该领域必须能够区分犯罪和因果风险因素的非毒物相关性，因为只有因果风险因素是预防的有用目标。不幸的是，由于许多原因，该领域对犯罪的早期因果风险因素的当前理解可能会严重缺陷。最重要的是，几乎所有以前的研究中使用的设计几乎没有将因果因素与非因果关系相关性区分开。创新：该领域必须超越传统的“室间”设计，这些设计比较了来自无关家庭的儿童，从而将假设的危险因素与家庭之间不同的众多相关因素混淆。取而代之的是，我们建议适应用于计量经济学研究的强大准实验方法，以检验我们的假设。这种方法比较了核心家庭中的兄弟姐妹，这些核心家庭因危险因素而异，以确定它们在犯罪方面是否有所不同，大大最大程度地减少了遗传和环境混杂，以提供严格的因果假设测试。方法：我们建议分析有关4,926名妇女的美国国家样本后代的纵向数据。对于怀孕和婴儿期间的每个推定危险因素，我们建议进行兄弟姐妹比较分析以检验关键因果假设：每个假定的因果风险因素是否影响青少年犯罪的风险（并且在不同的发展轨迹上对年轻人的情况有所不同）？这些早期风险变量是否会通过影响童年行为问题的影响而间接影响青少年犯罪？每个假定的早期因果风险因素是否会影响哪些儿童行为问题高的儿童前进到青少年犯罪（而不是停止反社会）？此外，为了加强理解早期风险变量机制的经验基础，我们将确定早期风险因素对女孩和男孩的任何影响的程度在多大程度上与男孩和男孩不同，并在童年后期由其他风险变量介导或调节。具体来说，早期的危险因素是否会使一些儿童更容易在童年后期和青春期的同伴影响下更容易受到育儿的影响？另外，适应性育儿和缺乏同伴压力可以减轻早期风险吗？ 公共卫生相关性：青少年犯罪危害受害者，并大大增加了犯罪者的罪犯，自杀，死亡和暴力，长期和传染病以及精神疾病的风险。由于暴力和犯罪的人类和财务成本是巨大的，因此美国外科医生确定犯罪的减少是高度重中之重。由于犯罪发展后很难治疗，因此需要成本效益的早期预防计划才能在开始之前停止犯罪。我们需要对怀孕和婴儿期间可修改因素有充分的了解，这可能是早发犯罪的因果风险因素，以识别创新的早期预防性干预措施的新的对照试验的目标。