Research Engagement

The Next Generation Project

The purpose of the Next Generation Project is to understand how and under what circumstances parents’ income, employment, and child care decisions affect the cognitive and emotional development of children and adolescents in low-income families.  By using a unique combination of experimental design and strong analytic strategies, the study represents a significant advance in research on the economic and child care determinants of children’s development. Analyses focus on several key features of employment, income and child care decisions.  At present, this study turns to the question of how the stability and amount of family income affect the achievement and behavior of low-income children. Frequent changes in income may increase material hardship, parental stress, unsustainable financial decisions, and disruptions to family routines and children’s activities, all of which have potentially negative consequences for children’s development. Using data from the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this study will examine the magnitude, frequency, and timing of monthly income changes in households with children, and document the associations, if any, between income volatility and child wellbeing.

http://www.mdrc.org/project_8_10.html

Head Start CARES Project

The Head Start CARES Project (Classroom-based Approaches and Resources for Emotion and Social skill promotion) was conceived and funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  In collaboration with MDRC (as the prime organization), academic partners, the Lewin Group and Survey Research Management, Morris is co-leading the Head Start CARES Project. The project uses a group-based randomized design to test the effects of a set of evidence-based strategies designed to improve the social and emotional development of children in Head Start classrooms. The evaluation randomly assigns approximately 120 centers to three interventions and a control group, with 30 centers in each of the four groups. The three treatment models are: (1) Preschool PATHS; (2) Incredible Years Teacher Training Program; and (3) Tools of the Mind. The Head Start CARES Project will provide information that federal policymakers and Head Start can use to increase Head Start’s capacity to improve the social-emotional skills and school readiness of preschool-age children. This study helps to improve our understanding of: (1) promising approaches to building children’s social and emotional development, (2) the processes by which the largest and most sustained effects on children’s social and emotional development are likely to occur, and (3) the features of Head Start settings and families that contribute to successful implementation of these program models. Head Start CARES Project holds the promise of identifying the impacts of these new approaches compared to current practices within Head Start settings and providing lessons about how they can best be integrated into Head Start classrooms around the country.

http://www.mdrc.org/project_11_89.html

Foundations of Learning Project

The Foundations of Learning Project is being conducted in partnership with researchers at MDRC as well as Cybele Raver at New York University and Stephanie Jones at Harvard University. The project builds on the growing evidence that resolving children’s early problem behaviors can provide the underpinning for a high-quality and effective preschool experience. Working in partnership with preschool programs in Newark, NJ, and Chicago, IL, Foundations of Learning is a large-scale test of a model that has produced promising results in small-scale studies where it has helped to resolve the severe behavioral problems of a small but influential subset of preschool children. A preview of findings from the Newark demonstration was released in September 2009. These early results provide evidence that the intervention: (1) improved teachers’ ability to effectively support children’s behavior and emotional development; (2) increased instructional time and created a positive climate for learning in classrooms; (3) reduced conflictual and acting-out behaviors by children; and (4) improved children’s ability to focus their attention, to curb their impulsivity, and to show greater engagement in the classroom. Overall, this preview of findings provides evidence that early investments in children’s emotional and behavioral readiness can pay off in children’s experiences in preschool. Further work will examine the effects of this program on children as the transition into elementary school and the effects in the Chicago site.

http://www.mdrc.org/project_11_78.html

Opportunity NYC: An Embedded Child and Family Study of Conditional Cash Transfers

In 2007, the Center for Economic Opportunity in the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York mounted the first holistic conditional cash transfer initiative in an economically advanced, services-rich jurisdiction. “Opportunity NYC/Family Rewards” (ONYC-Family Rewards), as the initiative is called, is a family-setting-level intervention in which cash incentives are used as levers of change to strengthen family functioning and to promote the extent to which children and their parents become connected and engaged with other settings and systems - namely education, employment, and health care. Payments can amount to $4000-$6000 per family per year, and include education-based incentives, health-based incentives and workforce-related incentives. The program targets families in low-income communities in New York City with children in the 4th, 7th, and 9th grades, and is being evaluated by MDRC using a rigorous random-assignment design. This embedded child and family study adds to the core study by addressing the effects of this intervention on key aspects of the family setting, including social processes and resource allocation; on key mediating developmental processes, such as children’s academic efficacy and outcome expectations, academic competence, and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation; and on long term outcomes for children not directly targeted by this intervention, most notably their mental health and problem behavior.

http://www.mdrc.org/project_16_88.html

Rhode IslandChild Study

This study builds on the Rhode Island site of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, being conducted by MDRC. The purpose of this study is to understand how and under what circumstances changes in parents’ depression affect the development of children and adolescents in low-income families. This study capitalizes on the unique opportunity provided by an existing experimental study that explicitly aims to reduce parents’ depressive symptomatology among low-income families. The analyses make use of a random assignment design to address the ways in which changes in parents’ depression affect psychosocial  (behavioral problems as well as skills and socioemotional competencies), clinical (risk of affective disorders), cognitive (verbal competencies and achievement), and physiological (dysregulation of the adrenocortical system) outcomes for children and adolescents in low-income families. The intervention includes outreach by a clinically-trained care manager to facilitate engagement in treatment along with ongoing efforts to improve both the quality of care patients receive as well as to promote strategies to maintain continuity of care. Future research will explore economic conditions and financial strain in their effects on children’s mental health and physiology. These data provide a unique opportunity to explore questions about how economic conditions of parents affect the mental health and physiology of low-income children and youth. 

http://www.mdrc.org/project_12_8.html

Secondary Analysis of Variation Impacts  of Head Start Center (SAVI Head Start Center)

This project, a collaboration among three institutions: New York University (Principal Investigator Pamela Morris, and Co- Investigators Cybele Raver and Larry Aber),  MDRC (Co-Principal Investigator Howard Bloom) and Harvard University (Co-Principal Investigator Hiro Yoshikawa, and Co- Investigator Lindsey Page), creates a center to conduct secondary analysis of data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS).  Our analyses will extend HSIS findings to address a key question it left unanswered: How are features of Head Start centers associated with variation in program impacts on key child outcomes of cognitive functioning, social-emotional skills, and health status?  Our guiding framework bridges the gap between the fields of intervention science, which focuses on impacts of interventions, and implementation science, which focuses on the implementation of interventions.  The study is based on an in-depth exploration of the Head Start treatment contrast: the differences between the nature, quality, and timing of developmental, health, and other services and benefits received by Head Start participants versus what they would have received had they not participated in the program (counterfactual experiences).  Our framework acknowledges that impacts of Head Start treatment contrast might depend on the characteristics of the program’s participant children and families, as well as the neighborhoods in which Head Start participants live and go to school.  We are also interested in how quality and quantity lend themselves to the overall impacts of the Head Start programs.

School Reform and Beyond 0-3

This study tests a comprehensive approach to the prevention of substance use in low-income families through enhancement of positive parenting practices within the pediatric primary care platform.  We do so by integrating two evidence-based interventions: (1) a universal primary prevention strategy, Video Interaction Project (VIP), that provides parents with a developmental specialist who videotapes the parent and child and coaches the parent on effective parenting practices; and (2) Family Check Up (FCU) a home-based, family-centered intervention that utilizes an initial ecologically-focused assessment to promote motivation for parents to change child-rearing behaviors, with follow-up sessions on parenting and factors that compromise parenting quality for families with infants/toddlers identified as having additional risks. The largest single contribution made by this study is to test in pediatric primary care whether an integrated primary-secondary-tertiary prevention strategy can produce impacts on early child outcomes identified as precursors to later substance abuse risk, such as aggression and opposition, and low pre-academic skills. As such, this study has the potential to provide the scientific and practice communities with information about an innovative approach to reducing substance abuse risk among low-income children.

Publications

• Ganzel, B. L. & Morris, P. A., (2011). Allostasis and the developing brain: Explicit consideration of implicit models.  Development and Psychopathology: Special issue on Allostasis, Vol 2.  [lead article].
• Duncan, G., Morris, P., & Rodrigues, C. (2011).  Does money really matter?  Estimating impacts of family income on children’s achievement with data from social policy experiments.  Developmental Psychology. [alphabetic listing of authors to reflect equal contribution].
• Hill, H., Morris, P., Castells, N., Thornton, J. (2011).  Getting a job is only half the battle: Maternal job loss and child classroom behavior in low-income families.  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 30 (2), 310-333.
  
• Yoshikawa, H., Gassman-Pines, A., Morris, P.A., Gennetian, L. A., & Godfrey, E. (2011). Racial/Ethnice Difference in Effects of Welfare Policies on Early School Readiness and Later Achievement. Applied Developmental Science.
• Gennetian, L., Castells, N., & Morris, P. A. (2010). Meeting the basic needs of children: Does income matter? Children and Youth Services Review, doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.03.004
• Ganzel, B. L., Morris, P. A., & Wethington, E. (2010). Allostasis and the Human Brain: Integrating Models of Stress from the Social Life Sciences. Psychological Review, 117 (1), 134-174.
• Morris, P., Gennetian, L., Duncan, G., & Huston, A.  (2009).  How Welfare Policies Affect Child and Adolescent School Performance: Investigating Pathways of Influence with Experimental Data.  In James P. Ziliak (ed.), Welfare Reform and its Long-Term Consequences for America's Poor, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 
• Morris, P., Raver, C., Lloyd, C. M., & Millenky, M. (2009). Can Teacher Training in Classroom Management Make a Difference for Children’s Experiences in Preschool? A Preview of Findings from the Foundations of Learning Demonstration. MDRC: New York, NY. http://www.mdrc.org/publications/527/full.pdf 
• Duncan, G., Gennetian, L., & Morris, P. (2009).  Parental Pathways to Self-Sufficiency and the Well-Being of Younger Children.  In C. J. Heinrich and J. K. Scholz (Eds.)  Making the Work-based Safety Net Work Better: Forward-looking Policies to Help Low-Income Families.  New York: Russell Sage. [alphabetic listing of authors to reflect equal contribution]
• Morris, P., & Hendra, R. (2009).  Losing the safety net: How a time limited welfare policy affects families at risk of reaching time limits.  Developmental Psychology, 45 (2), 383–400.
• Morris, P. (2008).  From welfare policy to practice: Linking program implementation and parents’ depression.  Social Service Review.  82 (4), 579-614.
• Morris, P. (2008). Bronfenbrenner, Urie.  In D. Carr (Ed.) Encyclopedia of the Life Course and Human Development. Macmillan Reference USA. 
• Hill, H., & Morris, P. (2008).  Welfare reform policies and very young children: Experimental impacts of welfare programs on the cognitive and behavioral development of young preschool children.  Developmental Psychology, 44 (6), 1557-1571.
• Gennetian, L., Magnuson, K., & Morris, P. (2008).  From statistical association to causation: What developmentalists can learn from Instrumental Variables techniques coupled with experimental data.  Developmental Psychology, 44 (2), 381-394.  [alphabetic listing of authors to reflect equal contribution]
• Duncan, G., Gennetian, L., & Morris, P. (in press).  Effects of Welfare and Anti-Poverty Policies on Participant’s Children.  Focus. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty.
• Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. (2006).  The Bioecological Model of Human Development.  In R. M. Lerner and W. Damon (Ed.), Theoretical Models of Human Development.  Vol. 1 of the Handbook of Child Psychology (5th ed.) New York: Wiley. 
• Ficano, C., Gennetian, L., & Morris, P. (2006).  Child Care Subsidies and Employment Behavior among Very-Low-Income Populations in Three States.  Review of Policy Research, 23 (3), 681-698.
• Morris, P., & Kalil, A. (2006).  Out of school time use during middle childhood in a low-income sample: Do combinations of activities affect achievement and behavior?  In A. Huston & M. Ripke (Eds.), Middle Childhood: Contexts of Development.  New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Morris, P., & Gennetian, L. (2006).  Indicators and policy decisions: The important role of experimental studies.  In A. Ben-Arieh & R.M. Goerge, Indicators of Children's Well Being: Understanding their Role, Usage and Policy Influence (pp. 161-172), Springer: Dordrecht, Netherlands
• Yoshikawa, H., Gassman-Pines, A., Morris, P., Gennetian, L., Roy, A., & Godfrey, E. (2006).  Effects of welfare and employment policies on academic outcomes: Do they vary by race/ethnicity and if so, how?  In A. Huston & M. Ripke (Eds.), Middle Childhood: Contexts of Development.  New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Morris, P., Duncan, G., & Clark-Kauffman, E. (2005). Child well-being in an era of welfare-reform: The sensitivity of transitions in development to policy change.  Developmental Psychology, 41 (6), 919-932.
• Morris, P., Scott, E., & London, A. (2005).  Effects on Children of Parents Transition from Welfare to Employment: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Research.  In J. Duerr Berrick & B. Fulller (Eds.), Good Parents or Good Workers? How Policy Shapes Families' Daily Lives. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Gennetian, L., Morris, P., Bos, J., & Bloom, H. (2005). Using instrumental variables analysis to learn more from social policy experiments.  In H. Bloom (Ed.) Learning More from Social Experiments: Evolving Analytic Approaches.  New York: Russell Sage. 
• Morris, P., Gennetian, L., & Duncan, G. (2005).  Effects of Welfare and Employment Policies on Young Children: New Findings on Policy Experiments Conducted in the Early 1990’s.  Social Policy Report, Society for Research in Child Development. Vol. XIX (2), 3-14.
• Morris, P., Bloom, D., Kemple, J., & Hendra, R. (2003). The effects of a time limited welfare program on children: The moderating role of parents’ risk of welfare dependency.  Child Development, 74(3), 851-874.
• Morris, P., & Gennetian, L. (2003). Identifying the effects of income on children: Integrating an instrumental variables estimation method with an experimental design.  Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 716-729. 
• Morris, P., & Michalopoulos, C. (2003). Findings from the Self Sufficiency Project: Effects on children and adolescents of a program that increased employment and income. Applied Developmental Psychology, 24, 201-239.
• Gennetian, L., & Morris, P. (2003). How Time Limits and Make Work Pay Strategies Affect the Well-Being of Children:  Experimental Evidence from Two Welfare Reform Programs.  Children and Youth Services Review, 25(1/2), 17-54.                   
• Clark-Kauffman, E., Duncan, G., & Morris, P. (2003). How welfare polices affect child and adolescent achievement.  American Economic Review-Papers and Proceedings, 93 (2), 299-303.
• Morris, P., Knox, V., & Granger, R. (2003). Child Well Being in the Context of Welfare Reform: What Are We Learning?  In R. Gordon and H. Walberg (Eds), Changing Welfare (pp. 15-36). Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
• Bloom, D., Scrivener, S., Michalopoulos, C., Morris, P., Hendra, R., Adams-Ciardullo, D., & Walter, J. (2002). Jobs First: Final Report on Connecticut’s Welfare Reform Initiative. New York: MDRC. http://www.mdrc.org/publications/90/full.pdf
• Michalopoulos, C., Tattrie, D., Miller, C., Robins, P. K., Morris, P., Gyarmati, D., Redcross, C., Foley, K., Ford, R. (2002).  Making work pay: Final report on the Self Sufficiency Project for long-term welfare recipients. Ottawa: Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC).
• Morris, P. (2002).  The effects of welfare reform policies on children.  Social Policy Report, Society for Research in Child Development. Vol. XVI (1), 4-18.
• Morris, P., & Duncan, G. (2002). What welfare reforms are best for children?  In I. V. Sawhill, R. K. Weaver, R. Haskins, and A. Kane (Eds.)  Welfare reform and beyond: The future of the safety net. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
• Morris, P., Knox, V., & Gennetian, L. (2002). Welfare policies matter for children and youth: Lessons for TANF reauthorization.  Next Generation Project Policy Brief. New York: MDRC. http://www.mdrc.org/publications/183/policybrief.pdf
• Morris, P., Duncan, G., Huston, A., Crosby, D., & Bos, J. (2001). How Welfare and Work Policies Affect Children: A Synthesis of Research. New York: MDRC. http://www.mdrc.org/publications/100/full.pdf
• Morris, P., & Michalopoulos (2000). The Self Sufficiency Project at 36 Months: Effects on Children of a Program that Increased Employment and Income.  Ottawa: SRDC.
• Bloom, D., Kemple, J., Morris, P., Scrivener, S., Verma, N., & Hendra, R. (2000). The Family Transition Program: Final Report on Florida’s Initial Time-Limited Welfare Program. New York: MDRC. http://www.mdrc.org/publications/20/full.pdf
• Olds, D., Henderson, C., Cole, R., Eckenrode, J., Kitzman, H., Luckey, D., Pettitt, L., Sidora, K., Morris, P., & Powers, J. (1998). Long-term effects of nurse home visitation on children's criminal and antisocial behavior: 15-year follow-up of a randomized trial.  Journal of the American Medical Association, 280, 1238-1244.
• Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. (1998). The ecology of developmental processes. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical Models of Human Development.  Vol. 1 of the Handbook of Child Psychology (5th ed.) (pp. 993-1028). Editor-in-chief: William Damon. New York: Wiley.
• Olds, D., Eckenrode, J., Henderson, C., Kitzman, H., Powers, J., Cole, R., Sidora, K., Morris, P., Pettitt, L., & Luckey, D.  (1997).  Long-term effects of home visitation on maternal life course and child abuse and neglect: 15-year follow-up of a randomized trial.  Journal of the American Medical Association, 278 (8), 637-643.
• Morris, P., Hembrooke, H., Gelbwasser, A., & Bronfenbrenner, U. (1996). American families: Today and tomorrow.  In U. Bronfenbrenner, P. McClelland, E. Wethington, P. Moen, & S. Ceci, The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next. New York: Free Press.