Based on theoretically driven models, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) targeted low-income children’s school readiness through the mediating mechanism of self-regulation. The CSRP is a multicomponent, cluster-randomized efficacy trial implemented in 35 Head Start–funded classrooms (N = 602 children). The analyses confirm that the CSRP improved low-income children’s self-regulation skills (as indexed by attention/impulse control and executive function) from fall to spring of the Head Start year. Analyses also suggest significant benefits of CSRP for children’s preacademic skills, as measured by vocabulary, letter-naming, and math skills. Partial support was found for improvement in children’s self-regulation as a hypothesized mediator for children’s gains in academic readiness. Implications for programs and policies that support young children’s behavioral health and academic success are discussed.

Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were used in this investigation, because they include repeated measures of child care experiences, externalizing behavior, and family characteristics. There were three main findings. First, the evidence linking child care hours with externalizing behavior was equivocal in that results varied across model specifications. Second, the association between child care hours and externalizing behavior was not due to a child effect. Third, child care quality and proportion of time spent with a large group of peers moderated the effects of child care hours on externalizing behavior. Child care hours was more strongly related to externalizing behavior when children were in low-quality child careand when children spent a greater proportion of time with a large group of peers. The magnitude of associations between child care hours and externalizing behavior was modest. Implications for parents and policymakers must take into account that externalizing behavior is predicted from a constellation of variables in multiple contexts. TIME IN CHILD CARE Testing a Series of Causal Propositions Relating Time in Child Care to Children's Externalizing BehaviorReviewers of the literature on early child care have frequently noted an association between spending more time in child care and exhibiting more externalizing behavior, such as assertive, disobedient, and aggressive acts (Belsky, 1986;2001;Clarke-Stewart & Fein, 1983).Longitudinal investigations of externalizing problems indicate that these behaviors often persist into elementary school (Campbell, 1995(Campbell, , 2002Campbell, Pierce, Moore, Marakovitz, & Newby, 1996;Verhulst & Van der Ende, 1992) and that elevated levels of externalizing problems are accompanied by peer rejection and poor academic performance (Campbell, 2002;Farmer & Bierman, 2002). Behavior problems can interfere with a child's acquisition of age-appropriate skills (Campbell, 2002), potentially leading to antisocial behavior in adolescence (Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Suomi, & Cole, 2005) and adulthood (Levenston, 2002). Even though child care experience has not been linked to clinical levels of problems, researchers and policymakers have worried that extensive use of child care in the early years might be a risk factor for increasing problem behaviors without causing clinical problems.Studies have demonstrated that children exhibit more of these negative behaviors if they spend more time in care before they enter kindergarten (Bates, Marvinney, Kelly, Dodge, Bennett, & Pettit, 1994;Magnuson, Meyers, Ruhm, & Waldfogel, 2004;Vandell & Corasaniti, 1990), are in more hours of care in the first year of life (Hofferth, 1999), start care at younger ages, or spend more hours there each day (Loeb, Bridges, Bassok, Fuller, & Rumberger, 2007).In the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), associations were documented between the amount of time children had spent in child care and externalizing behavior at 24 months of age (NICHD Early C...

Existing studies of child care have not been able to determine whether higher quality child care protects children from the effects of poverty, whether poverty and lower quality child care operate as dual risk factors, or whether both are true. The objective of the current study was to test two pathways through which child care may serve as a naturally occurring intervention for low-income children: a direct pathway through child care quality to child outcomes, and an indirect pathway through improvements in the home environment. Children were observed in their homes and child care settings at 6, 15, 24, and 36 months. An interaction between family income-to-needs ratio and child care quality predicted School Readiness, Receptive Language, and Expressive Language, as well as improvements in the home environment. Children from low-income families profited from observed learning supports in the form of sensitive care and stimulation of cognitive development, and their parents profited from unobserved informal and formal parent supports. Policy implications are discussed.

The current study was designed to develop a better understanding of the nature of the relationships between mental health burden, drug use, and unprotected sexual behavior within a sample of emerging adult gay and bisexual men, ages 18–19 (N = 598) and to test a theory of syndemics using structural equation modeling. Participants were actively recruited from community-based settings and the Internet for participation in a seven-wave cohort study. Data for participant characteristics and mental health were collected via computer-assisted survey, while drug use and unprotected sex behaviors for the month prior to assessment were collected via a calendar-based technique. Using the baseline data, we developed and tested structural equation models for mental health burden, drug use, and unprotected sex and also tested a second-order model for a single syndemic. First-order measurement models for each of the three epidemics were successfully identified using observed data. Tests of a second-order model seeking to explain the three epidemics as a single syndemic fit poorly. However, a second-order construct comprised of mental health burden and drug use fit the data well and was highly associated with the first-order construct of unprotected sex. The findings advance a theory of syndemics and suggest that in order to be maximally effective both HIV prevention and HIV care must be delivered holistically such that sexual risk behaviors are addressed in relation to, and in sync with, the drug use and mental health of the individual.

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the authors investigated whether there was evidence of intraindividual stability in behavior problems over time as well as whether children with higher levels of behavior problems at 24 months and more rapid increases in behavior problems prior to school entry performed more poorly on 1st-grade tests of cognitive ability and achievement than their peers. Three findings were noteworthy. First, there was evidence of both intraindividual and interindividual variability in behavior problems between 24 months and 1st grade. Second, children with higher initial levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors at 24 months had lower cognitive ability and achievement scores in 1st grade. Finally, children with more rapid increases in internalizing behaviors over time had lower cognitive ability scores in 1st grade; this association did not exist for externalizing behaviors. Implications for future research are discussed.