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: 8069140
• 负责人: Benjamin B Lahey
• 金额: $ 24.46万
• 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/8069140
• 关键词: 13 year old; 9 year old; Address; Adolescence; Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Behavior; Child; Child Behavior; Childhood; Chronic Disease; 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 Health; Mental disorders; Methods; Modeling; Neurocognitive Deficit; Nuclear Family; Parenting behavior; 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 effective; 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）：青少年犯罪者不仅伤害受害者，而且面临着遭受一系列严重的精神和身体健康后果的高风险。由于反社会行为发生后很难减少，因此人们对开发有效的方法在犯罪发生前预防犯罪产生了极大的兴趣。然而，由于反社会行为通常发生在幼儿时期，因此必须在生命早期就开始进行早期预防。因此，我们需要严格评估怀孕和婴儿期犯罪的假设风险因素（例如，产前接触物质和婴儿期养育）。至关重要的是，该领域必须能够区分犯罪的非因果相关性和因果风险因素，因为只有因果风险因素才是有用的预防目标。不幸的是，由于多种原因，该领域目前对犯罪早期因果风险因素的理解可能存在严重缺陷。最重要的是，几乎所有先前的研究中使用的设计几乎没有区分因果因素和非因果相关因素。创新：该领域必须超越传统的“家庭间”设计，即比较来自不相关家庭的儿童，从而将假设的风险因素与家庭之间不同的无数相关因素混为一谈。相反，我们建议采用为计量经济学研究开发的强大的同级比较分析的准实验方法来检验我们的假设。这种方法比较核心家庭中风险因素不同的兄弟姐妹，以确定他们的犯罪行为是否不同，从而大大减少遗传和环境混杂因素，从而为因果假设提供严格的检验。方法：我们建议分析美国全国 4,926 名女性样本的后代的纵向数据。对于怀孕和婴儿期的每个假定的风险因素，我们建议进行兄弟姐妹比较分析，以检验关键的因果假设：每个假定的因果风险因素是否都会影响青少年犯罪的风险（对于不同发展轨迹的青少年来说，其影响有所不同）？这些早期风险变量是否通过影响儿童行为问题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期行为问题严重的儿童发展为青少年犯罪（而不是不再反社会）？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的影响对女孩和男孩的不同程度，以及在童年后期由其他风险变量介导或调节的程度。具体来说，早期风险因素是否会使一些儿童在童年后期更容易受到不当养育和青春期期间异常同伴影响的影响？或者，适应性养育和缺乏同侪压力可以减轻早期风险吗？ 公共卫生相关性：青少年犯罪会伤害受害者，并大大增加肇事者因暴力、慢性和传染病以及精神障碍而被监禁、自杀、死亡和受伤的风险。由于暴力和犯罪造成的人员和经济损失巨大，美国卫生局局长将减少犯罪列为重中之重。由于犯罪一旦发生就很难治疗，因此需要具有成本效益的早期初级预防计划来阻止犯罪发生。我们需要充分了解怀孕和婴儿期可能导致早发犯罪的可改变因素，以确定创新早期预防干预措施的新对照试验的目标。