Filter Studies by Principle

Sample

• N: 10 articles (of 3286 identified) originating from Spain, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Iran, UK, Thailand and the United States
• Search Method: Ovid Medline, CINAHL, Cochrane, and Web of Knowledge databases were used to identify appropriate research articles published in English from 2000 to 2012, using relevant terms in a variety of combinations
• Inclusion Criteria: Relevancy for labor and birthing outcomes

Objective

1. To determine the effect of antenatal education on labor and birth, particularly normal birth

Design—Systematic literature review

Sample

• N: 99
• Subject Ages: 2 to 3 years
• Location: United States, a suburban area in the Midwestern region
• SES: Overall, these demographics indicated that the present sample represented a low-risk group of mothers and their toddlers
• Eligibility: Mother had at least one child between the ages of 2 and 3 years
• Additional: 
  • On average, participants were 30.74 years of age
  • 81.6% European-American, 10.7% African-American, 4.9% Asian-American, 4.1% Latina (numbers add to more than 100% because some participants were multiracial)
  • 71.4% married and 93.8% reported that their target child’s father was part of his/her life 

Hypotheses

1. The intervention, consisting of 12 face-to-face parent education sessions in a university setting or online sessions combined with booklets, would improve maternal socioemotional well-being, but improvements would be most substantial when the booklet was supplemented with face-to-face or web-based components.
2. Effects would be at least partially dependent on the mothers’ perceptions of their toddler’s behavior problems. 

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal socioemotional adjustment - The Symptoms Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R)
• Children’s behavior problems - the Brief Infant Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA; Briggs-Gowan, et al. 2004)

Design—RCT

Sample

• N: 1,047
• Subject Ages: Mothers 14–25 years
• Location: United States, two public hospitals: one in New Haven, Connecticut, the other in Atlanta, Georgia
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Teen and young pregnant women
• Additional:  
  • 80% African American, 13% Latina, 6% White, 1% mixed or other race/ethnicity
  • 38% had completed high school (or graduate equivalent degree), 36% were still in high school, 26% had dropped out
  • 32% were currently employed; the remainder received public assistance (22%) or economic support from the baby’s father (25%) or family members (16%)
  • All patients had public (e.g. Medicaid) or hospital assistance for complete prenatal care coverage
  • 48% were nulliparous

Hypotheses

1. CenteringPregnancy Plus (CP+), a bundled intervention designed to reduce negative birth outcomes, decrease sexual risk, and improve psychosocial outcomes within a model of group prenatal care, will result in increased self-esteem and social support as well as decreased stress, social conflict, and depression.
2. The intervention will have an even greater effect for those at highest risk of adverse outcomes: younger age, African Americans, and those highest in stress.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Stress - the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)
• Self esteem - the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale
• Social support - seven items of the social support subscale of the Social Relationship Scale
• Social conflict - seven items of the social conflict subscale of the Social Relationship Scale
• Depression - affect-only component of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale
• Demographic and behavioral characteristics

Design—RCT

Sample

• N: 272
• Subject Ages: Mean maternal age was 30 years
• Location: United States, prenatal clinics affiliated with two large urban medical centers
• SES: Diverse populations in terms of maternal education, income, and ethnicity/race
• Eligibility: Women who reported being in an intimate relationship with a partner at T1, were pregnant, at least 18 years of age, at 18 weeks singleton gestation or less at enrollment, and able to be interviewed in English
• Additional:
  • 79% of the current sample was married at T1, and all but three reported their partner was the baby’s father
  • 53% non-Hispanic White, 21% Latina, 1% African American, 10% Asian American
  • Distribution of annual household income was 16% under $30,000, 27% from $30,000-60,000, 24% from $60,000-90,000, and 33% over $90,000 (mean household size 2.9 persons)
  • 12% held a high school diploma or less education; 36% held a technical degree, certificate, associate’s degree, or attended some college; 52% held a bachelor’s degree or higher
  • 58% having a first birth 
  • Infants were born on average at 39.0 weeks gestation
  • 50% of the infants were male

Hypotheses

1. Maternal interpersonal security and relationship satisfaction would covary inversely with prenatal maternal emotional distress and positively influence perceptions of partner support, consistent with prior research (Rini et al., 2006).
2. Higher ratings of prenatal partner support would predict lower maternal postpartum emotional distress, as indicated by symptoms of depression and anxiety when controlling for prenatal symptoms.
3. Partner support would mediate associations of relationship satisfaction and interpersonal security with postpartum outcomes.
4. Prenatal and postpartum maternal emotional distress would be associated with more distressed infant temperament.
5. Also tested was a set of hypotheses regarding indirect effects of support via reductions in maternal emotional distress based on past research (Davis et al., 2007) and direct, inverse effects of partner support on infant temperament.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal interpersonal security (T1) -
  • a version of the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS; Collins & Read,1990) that contained three subscales (five items each): comfort with closeness, comfort depending on others, and anxiety about being rejected by others
  • the Network Orientation Scale
• Relationship satisfaction (T1) - the Marital Adjustment Test (MAT; Locke & Wallace, 1959)
• Partner support (T2) -
  • the Social Support Effectiveness (SSE) interview
  • the Pregnancy-Specific Support Needs questionnaire created by author based on prior research (Collins et al., 1993)
• Maternal emotional distress (T1, P1) -
  • the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, 1983)
  • the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Santor & Coyne, 1997)
• Infant distress to novelty (P1) - modified version of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ)

Design—Longitudinal, prospective

Sample

• N: 675
• Subject Ages: Children 2 to 6 months old at T1, mean maternal age at intake was 32 years
• Location: Netherlands, Rotterdam
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Children born between February 2003 and August 2005 with two parents and four grandparents born in the Netherlands
• Additional:
  • White Dutch
  • 49.2% girls
  • 63.8% of the children were born with spontaneous deliveries
  • Average birth weight was 3517 g, 3.7% of children had a low birth weight (2,500 g or less)
  • Mean five-minute Apgar score was 9.6, and only 0.9% had a score at or below 7, which is considered pathological
  • Educational level was generally high - 35.7% of the mothers had completed education beyond the bachelor’s degree

Objectives

1. Investigation into whether breastfeeding duration during the first 6 months is associated with maternal sensitive responsiveness, attachment security and attachment disorganization in a large prospective birth cohort.
2. Examined the potential mediating or moderating roles of maternal sensitive responsiveness and maternal oxytocin receptor genotype.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Breastfeeding -
  • initiation data from delivery reports
  • continuation data from postal questionnaires at 2 and 6 months after birth
• Maternal sensitive responsiveness - observed using Ainsworth’s rating scales
• Attachment security and disorganization - the Strange Situation Procedure
• OXTR Genotype - mothers were genotyped for polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor gene, OXTR

Design—Cohort, prospective

Sample

• N: 450
• Subject Ages: Children mean age of 7 years, female caregivers mean age of 34.3 years
• Location: Not available
• SES: Not available
• Additional:
  • 79.4% of the mothers were married
  • 77.6% of European American descent
  • 93.3% had completed secondary education, 35.4% had completed a college degree
  • 96% of the female caregivers were biological mothers

Hypotheses

1. Authoritative parenting, family affective involvement and family affective responsiveness would be negatively related to child emotional eating.
2. Authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting and minimizing and punitive responses to child emotion would be positively related to child emotional eating.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Emotional eating - the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) utilizing the questionnaire format appropriate for young children
• Parenting styles - the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire
• Minimizing and punitive responses to child emotion - the punitive and minimizing subscales of the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale
• Family affective responsiveness and involvement - two subscales from the McMasters Family Assessment Device

Design—Cross sectional

Sample

• N: 97
• Subject Ages: Birth to 12.0 and 15.9 years
• Location: United States, nine states
• SES: Diverse, based on the NICHD study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD)
• Eligibility: Children included in the NICHD study
• Additional:
  • Exclusion criteria - maternal age less than 18, non-singleton birth, lack of English fluency, post-birth hospitalization of more than seven days or plans for adoption

Hypothesis

1. Obesity in adolescents is related to the quality of the early maternal-child relationship.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Adolescent obesity - BMI
• Early maternal-child relationship quality - combined score from:
  • Direct observation at 15, 24, and 36 months
  • Attachment security - the Strange Situation
• Additional variables: Mother’s educational attainment, racial ethnic group, birth weights, household size and income at 24 months, mother’s weight and height when child was 15 years

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 21
• Inclusion criteria: Published research papers that studied Responsive Feeding in relation to infants and young children in low- and middle-income countries. Studies included populations of children less than 36 months and were published within the past 10 years in the English language. All articles followed the UNICEF child nutrition framework and had an outcome of child growth, dietary intake, illness or eating behavior and included a measure of responsive feeding.

Objective

1. To present the evolution of Responsive Feeding (RF) research in relation to infants and young children (IYC) in low- and middle-income countries (LAMI). This paper serves to compile the research in support of responsive feeding contributing to the growth of IYC in LAMI countries.

Design—Systematic literature review

Objective

1. To examine evidence for the practice and developmental benefits of responsive parenting with a view to providing a theoretical basis for responsive feeding.

Design—Descriptive literature review

Sample

• N: 17
• Subject Ages: Infants 2 to 4 weeks postpartum
• Location: United States, New Haven, Connecticut
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Biological mothers with full-term, healthy infants
• Additional: All mothers were Caucasian and married or cohabiting

Hypotheses

1. Brain regions related to maternal behaviors including the hypothalamus, midbrain, amygdala, striatum, cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex would show greater activation in breastfeeding mothers relative to formula-feeding mothers in response to own baby-cry.
2. Breastfeeding mothers would show greater levels of maternal sensitivity at three months postpartum.
3. The level of brain activity in response to own baby-cry at the first month postpartum would be associated with maternal sensitivity in dyadic interactions videotaped at three to four months postpartum.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal brain activation in response to her own baby’s cry versus control baby-cry one month postpartum - fMRI scanning
• Maternal sensitivity - videotaped in the home three to four months postpartum and coded with the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) Manual (Feldman, 1998)

Design—Descriptive

Sample

• N: 101
• Subject Ages: Mothers ages 15-37, mean maternal age 27.79 years
• Location: United States
• SES: $6,000-$190,000 annual income, mean $65,000
• Eligibility: Primiparous mothers
• Additional:
  • Education ranged from less than a high school diploma to graduate degrees
  • 72% European American, 25% African American, 2% Asian American, 1% Latin American
  • 11 mothers were single mothers with no father involvement

Hypotheses

1. Maternal detection of infant distress, empathy, infant-oriented emotion goals and emotion efficacy will correlate positively with maternal sensitivity, whereas negative maternal emotions will correlate negatively with maternal sensitivity.
2. Observed infant distress will interact with mothers’ emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress to predict sensitivity during the arousing tasks.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Depressive symptoms, prenatal and postnatal - the Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977)
• Distress detection - interviews
• Mother emotions - interview
• Infant-oriented emotion goals - interview
• Efficacy - questionnaire was modeled after Teti & Gelfand’s (1991) Maternal Self-Efficacy Scale, which has predicted sensitive maternal behavior in a number of studies (Hess, Teti & Hussey-Gardner, 2004; Teti & Gelfand)
• Behavioral coding -
  • the Observer 5.0 (Noldus Information Technology, Wageningen, Netherlands)
  • emotion-eliciting tasks adapted from Braungart-Rieker & Stifter (1996)
  • maternal sensitivity: observed

Design—Cross-sectional

Sample

• N: 34 (12 mother–infant dyads)
• Subject Ages: Infants under 1 year
• Location: South Africa, Cape Town
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Infants born with low birth weight (1,385-2,199 g) in a large, public maternity hospital

Hypotheses

1. Early mother-infant skin-to-skin contact (SSC) would correlate with subsequent scores of maternal sensitivity.
2. Early mother-infant SSC would be an independent predictor of later maternal sensitivity scores on these measures.
3. Examination of the amount of mother-infant SSC over the infants’ early life to determine the consistency of the SSC infants received.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Amounts of SSC - hospital records and home interviews
• Maternal sensitivity - videotapes of mother-infant interactions in the home, scored on the:
  • Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (Pederson, Moran & Bento, 1999)
  • Maternal Behavior subscale of the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (Sumner & Spietz, 1994)

Design—RCT

Sample

• N: 39 publications, 34 individual studies
• Locations:
  • United States, 27 studies;
  • Netherlands, six studies;
  • Canada, one study
• Search Method: Web of Science database Search conducted on January 12, 2011, using search terms: (cultur* OR ethnic* OR race OR racial OR minority OR minorities OR migrant OR immigrant OR Hispanic OR Latino OR Mexican OR African-American OR Chinese-American OR Asian OR Native American) AND (sensitiv* OR responsive* OR contingen* OR synchron* OR warmth OR ‘‘positive parenting’’ OR ‘‘maternal behavior’’) AND (parent* OR mother OR maternal OR father OR paternal) AND (child* OR toddler OR preschool* OR infant OR baby)
• Inclusion Criteria: The sample includes at least one ethnic  minority group; the study targeted children zero to five years of age; sensitivity is measured through standardized observations: the sensitivity construct includes at least a measure of appropriate responsiveness; the article reports results on at least one of the following topics: a) comparison of sensitivity means between majority and minority groups; b) association between sensitivity and child outcomes separately for minorities.

Objective

1. Systematic review of the literature on parental sensitivity and its outcomes in ethnic minority families to discern whether these assumptions are empirically valid

Design—Systematic literature review

Sample

• N: 12 mothers and their full-term infants (eight male, four female)
• Subject Ages: Birth to 2 years
• Location: United States, a midwestern community
• SES: Middle class
• Eligibility: Not available
• Additional:
  • All mothers were over 21 years, had completed high school diplomas and beyond, and were from intact, middle-class families
  • 11 Caucasian, one African American

Objective

1. To observe the overall duration of maternal touch and the types of touch employed by mothers across age (1, 3 and 5 1/2 months) and interaction context.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal touch - the Caregiver Infant Touch Scale

Design—Descriptive longitudinal

Sample

• N: 90
• Subject Ages: Mean maternal age was 29.4 years
• Location: Canada, perinatal clinics at two hospitals in a rural eastern area 
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Mothers of full-term infants who had no medical problems, and the mothers who had no immediate postpartum complications
• Additional:
  • 42% with university degree, 39% had some university or postsecondary education, 16% had a high school diploma with no further education, 3% were without a high school diploma
  • 99% white/non-Hispanic
  • 49% first child, 29% had a previous child, 22% had two or more previous children
  • 77% of the mothers chose to initially breastfeed their infant

Hypotheses

1. Mothers who engaged in skin-to-skin contact with their infants would have fewer depressive symptoms and have lower salivary cortisol than mothers who did not engage in skin-to-skin contact.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Depression -
  • the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale
  • the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale
• Salivary cortisol - samples taken at infant age of 1 week and 1 month

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 112 parents: 71 mothers, 41 fathers (not couples)
• Subject Ages: Parents of infants ages 4 to 6 months
• Location: Canada
• SES: Middle class
• Eligibility: Healthy parents and children
• Additional:
  • All parents completed at least 12 years of education
  • Mothers average age 28.7 years, completed 15.7 years of education
  • 81.3% were breastfeeding
  • Fathers average age 29.1 years, completed 15.5 years of education
  • Infants were born full-term, 96.3% were vaginal deliveries, average Apgar scores of 9.4

Hypotheses

1. There will be no difference in the baseline levels of plasma and salivary oxytocin (OT) in mothers and fathers during the first months of parenting.
2. Mothers who provide high levels of affectionate contact, but not those showing low levels, will show an increase in OT levels following mother-infant contact.
3. Fathers who provide high levels of affectionate contact, but not those showing low levels, will show an increase in OT level following father-infant contact.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Oxytocin - ELISA kit
• Parent affectionate contact - the Coding of Parent Infant Interactions (Noldus, Netherlands)
• Parent stimulatory contact - the Coding of Parent Infant Interactions (Noldus, Netherlands)

Design—Correlational

Sample

• N: 131
• Subject Ages: 3, 6, 9 and 12 months
• Location: Israel, northern region
• SES: Middle class
• Eligibility: Healthy mother and infant
• Additional: Urban

Hypothesis

1. Affectionate touch would be the most growth-promoting form of touch and would have the closest relations to mother-infant reciprocity as compared to all other forms of touch. Reciprocity was selected as an outcome variable due to the reported links between mother-infant reciprocity with the child’s cognitive, linguistic and social-emotional outcomes.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal touch - the Touch Scoring Instrument
• Maternal sensitivity and dyadic reciprocity - the Coding Interactive Behavior System

Design—Cross-sectional

Sample

• N: Not available
• Search Method: Not available
• Inclusion Criteria: Studies published between 2001 and date of publication

Objectives

1. To review:

• The role of touch in early development, including the effects of touch deprivation and touch aversion and the effects of touch on communication, emotions and personal relationships;
• The physiological and biochemical effects of touch;
• Massage therapy effects on various conditions including, prematurity, pain, attentiveness, depression and immune function;
• Virtual reality touch.

Design—Descriptive literature review

Sample

• N: 94
• Subject Ages: Infants ages 2 to 4 months
• Location: Not available
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Not available
• Additional:
  • Breastfeeding infants: Mean weight 5.36 kg; mean gestational age at birth of 39.2 weeks
  • Formula-fed infants: Mean weight 5.79 kg; mean gestational age at birth of 39.0 weeks

Hypotheses

1. Maternal melatonin passes through milk to the infant, and as a result, the infant will have a better nocturnal sleep, earlier establishment of circadian rhythm and decreased incidents of infantile colic.
2. Melatonin has a relaxing effect on the gastrointestinal system and has a hypnotic effect.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Irritability/potential infantile colic and sleep characteristics - questionnaire
• Melatonin levels in breastmilk and formula - ELISA

Design—Descriptive

Sample

• N: 8,500
• Subject Ages: Not available
• Location: England, County of Avon (total population 940,000)
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Children born in 1991 and 1992
• Additional: Predominantly White population, urban and rural mix similar to the rest of the United Kingdom

Objective

1. To examine sleep duration and patterns in a well-characterized, large, unselected cohort of children across early childhood.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Sleep duration - questionnaire

Design—Cohort, prospective longitudinal

Sample

• N: 29,287
• Subject Ages: Birth to 36 months
• Location:
  • Predominantly Asian (P-A) countries and regions: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
  • Predominantly Caucasian (P-C) countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States
• SES: Variable
• Eligibility: Parents who completed the questionnaire
• Additional:
  • Urban samples
  • 48.1% boys
  • 89.7% mothers
  • 75.7% parents were between 25 and 35 years old
  • 83.7% parents had some college education
  • 52.1% parents were employed full-time
  • There were significant differences between P-A and P-C for birth order, sex, age of respondent, education of respondent and employment status.

Objectives

1. To characterize sleep patterns, sleep behaviors and sleep problems in a large sample of children ages birth to 36 months in multiple P-A and P-C countries/regions.
2. To assess sleeping arrangements and parental perceptions of sleep problems in these young children.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Daytime and nighttime sleep patterns, sleep-related behaviors, sleeping arrangements (bed-sharing and room-sharing) and bedtime, child’s behavior during the last two weeks - Brief Infant Sleep Survey questionnaire expanded, Internet-based

Design—Cohort, cross-cultural

Sample

• N: 56 families
• Subject Ages: Children followed from birth to age 6 months
• Location: Israel
• SES: Upper-middle class
• Eligibility: Not available
• Additional:
  • 34 infant boys (61%)
  • Mean maternal age of 29.13 years (range 22–37) and average education was 16.15 years (range 12–22)
  • Mean paternal age of 31.3 (range 25–48) and average education was 16.03 years (range 12–22)
  • Mean number of rooms at home was 3.3 (range 2–6)
  • None of the mothers reported medical problems during delivery or following birth
  • None of the parents met the Israeli cutoff scores for psychopathology
  • Mean gestational age was 39.52 weeks and mean birth weight was 3.31 kg (range 2.3–4.2). All infants were healthy during the assessment period.
  • At the age of one month, all the infants were taken care of by their mother at home
  • At six months, 34% were completely home-reared with their mothers and 66% were in day care (babysitter or nursery)
  • At the age of 1 month, 93% of the infants were (fully or partially) nursed, whereas at the age of 6 months, 30.4% were still fully breastfeeding and 28.6% were partially breastfeeding

Hypotheses

1. Mothers would be more involved in infant caregiving than fathers.
2. The involvement of fathers in the infant caregiving would increase over the first six months of life.
3. Higher involvement of fathers in overall and nighttime infant care would be associated with more consolidated sleep after controlling for breastfeeding.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Assessment of parental involvement in infant care - the Parental Involvement Questionnaire
• Sleep assessment -
  • actigraphy
  • sleep diary
• Feeding -
  • general scale (formula-fed, partially breastfed, exclusively breastfed)
  • Soothing Scale (five-point Likert scale for frequency of using breastfeeding to soothe at night)

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 34 articles
• Search Method: An extensive literature search of five electronic databases was conducted: Ovid MEDLINE, Web of Science, CINAHL, Scopus, and PsycINFO. All databases were searched for relevant articles published from 1990 to 2010 in which the title, abstract or keywords included reference to sleep and infant (age 0 to 23 months), or preschool (age 2 to 5 years) or child (age 6 to 12 years), and diary or questionnaires or actigraphy. The search was limited to English-language articles. Titles and abstracts were examined to extract potentially relevant articles and subsequently examined in more depth for inclusion/exclusion criteria by the main author and the research assistant.
• Inclusion Criteria: Studies were required to fulfill the following criteria: a) original article; b) prospective cohort design; c) non-clinic studies; d) participants aged 0 to 12 years; e) sample was well-described (e.g., number of subjects, gender, recruitment criteria, etc.); f) include one or more of the following variables of interest: sleep duration, sleep latency, number of night wakings, longest sleep period, number of daytime sleeps; g) data for variables of interest were presented numerically with a measure of central tendency and variance.
• Exclusion Criteria: Studies were excluded if: a) case-control design was used; b) the work was published as a dissertation or abstract only; c) if more than one report from the same study was published, we included only the first publication with data meeting the inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Objective

1. To provide a standard against which abnormal sleep patterns can be measured, to in turn inform policy and strategies for intervention and to contribute to and advance our knowledge regarding developmental patterns of sleep.

Design—Meta analysis

Sample

• N: 1,200
• Subject Ages: 6, 15, 24 and 36 months
• Location: United States, hospitals at 10 data collection sites
• SES: 24% ethnic minority, 11% of mothers did not complete high school, 14% single mothers (groups not mutually exclusive)
• Eligibility: Not available
• Additional: The sample was not designed to be nationally representative. However, the sample was similar to families in the census tract records and the nation as a whole on key demographic variables (household income and ethnicity).

Objectives

1. Estimate the developmental trajectories of children’s sleep awakenings.
2. Identify important variables associated with the developmental trajectories by examining relations of the trajectories with temperament, breastfeeding experiences, attachment security, health problems during infancy, and familial and environmental risk factors.
3. Examine individual differences in sleep awakenings at specific points across infancy.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Number of nights per week with sleep awakenings - standardized interview
• Sleep problems - the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2-3; Achenbach, 1992)
• Gender and birth weight - interview
• Temperament - 39 items selected from the 55 items on the Infant Temperament Questionnaire (Medoff Cooper, Carey, & McDevitt, 1993)
• Whether mother breastfeeds - mother report
• Attachment quality - the Strange Situation
• Child illnesses - mother report
• Maternal depression - the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977)
• Maternal sensitivity - semi-structured, videotaped, coded interactions
• Maternal health - mother report
• Spouse/partner in the home - mother report
• Poverty - mother report
• Child care - mother report

Design—Correlational

Sample

• N: 1,364
• Subject Ages: 1 month to sixth grade
• Location: United States, 10 locations
• SES: 21% had incomes no more than 200% of the poverty level
• Eligibility: Families completed a home interview when the infant was 1 month old
• Additional:
  • 26% of the mothers had no more than a high school education
  • 22% were minority
  • Substudy of the NICHD SECCYD

Hypotheses

1. Infants with difficult temperaments are disproportionately affected by parenting and child care quality.
2. This study investigates the prospect that virtually all earlier analysis of child care quality effects using NICHD SECCYD data may have misestimated quality of care effect.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Difficult temperament - maternal report at six months with adapted version of the Infant Temperament Questionnaire
• Parenting quality at six to 54 months -
  • mother-child interactions were videotaped at six, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months and coded for composite mother sensitivity
  • the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment at six, 15, 36 and 54 months
• Child care characteristics -
  • child care quality: observational assessments utilizing the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment (ORCE) at five, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months
  • child care quantity: parent reports
  • child care types
• Covariates -
  • maternal, child, and family characteristics of early childhood
  • maternal, child, and family characteristics of early grades
• Child outcomes -
  • academic achievement
  • the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised
  • the Social Skills Questionnaire
  • behavior problems: the Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form
  • teacher-child conflict: the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, Short Form
  • academic work habits: teachers completed a 19-item mock report card
  • socioemotional functioning: mock report card items came from the Teacher Checklist of Peer Relations

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 1,364
• Subject Ages: Birth to 4.5 years and 15 years
• Location: United States, 10 locations
• SES: 21% had incomes no greater than 200% of the poverty level
• Eligibility: Children at birth through age 4 1/2, to be followed up with as adolescents

Hypotheses

1. Non-relative child care during the first 4 1/2 years of life predicts academic achievement and behaviors adjustment at age 15.
2. Links between early child care and adolescent outcomes are moderated by child gender or familial risk.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Child care characteristics - telephone and in-home interviews at three-month intervals until 36 months and four-month intervals until 4.5 years.
• Quality of care - the ORCE at intervals of 6, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months.
• Adolescent functioning -
  • cognitive academic achievement: the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised
  • risk-taking: audio computer-assisted self-interview
  • impulsivity: eight-item questionnaire taken from the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory
  • externalizing problems: youth self report
• Maternal, child, family, and school controls -
  • maternal education, child gender, child race and ethnicity, the proportion of epochs throughout the 4 1/2 years that the mother reported a husband or partner was present, family income, maternal Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised, maternal psychological adjustment, NEO Personality Inventory, maternal depressive symptoms: Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale,   early-parenting quality
• Child functioning in early and middle childhood -
  • cognitive academic achievement: WJ-R Letter-Word Identification & Broad Reading, applied problems and picture vocabulary
  • externalizing behaviors: the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991b) completed by teachers

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 771
• Subject Ages: 24, 36 and 54 months
• Location: United States
• SES: Higher income families, income-to-needs ratio of 4:1
• Eligibility: Children in non-maternal child care
• Additional: Subsample of families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development

Hypotheses

1. Children with both low-quality home and non-maternal care would exhibit more internalizing and externalizing problems, more disruptive behaviors and fewer pro-social behaviors than would children in any other group.
2. High-quality child care would bring children experiencing low-quality home environments into the range of children experiencing average-quality home environments.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Predictors -
  • parenting quality predictor scores: calculated from scores on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) administered at 15, 36 and 54 months
  • maternal sensitivity: rated through videotaped interactions at 24, 36 and 54 months
  • quality of the child’s primary non-maternal child care setting: using the ORCE from the original study by the NICHD ECCRN
• Child outcomes - 
  • behavior problems and pro-social behavior: collected from mothers and primary caregivers
  • the Child Behavior Checklist
  • the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI)

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 3,001
• Subject Ages: 1/4 unborn; 1/4 ages 6 months or older; 1/2 birth to age 6 months
• Location: United States, 17 different Early Head Start program locations
• SES: Low income
• Eligibility: Children ages birth to 2, when children rely on physical proximity as the primary indicator of their mothers’ availability

Hypotheses

1. Early mother-child separation would be related to maternal behaviors such that children who experienced separation would have mothers who were generally less sensitive and positive toward their children at age 3 than children who did not experience separation.
2. Mother-child separation during the first two years of life would be negatively related to children’s subsequent socioemotional and language development.
3. The effects of separation on children’s development would persist such that effects observed at age 3 would still be evident at age 5.
4. Early mother-child separation would covary with measures of family and household instability during the child’s first two years of life.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Early mother-child separation of one week or more in the previous year - author questionnaire
• Maternal parenting behaviors at child age 3 - three measures drawn from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)
• Child outcomes at ages 3 and 5 -
  • Aggressive behavior: the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)
  • Negativity toward mother: author observational scale
  • Receptive vocabulary: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
• Early household instability - author questionnaire
• Baseline demographic characteristics - author questionnaire

Design—RCT, longitudinal

Objective

1. To review of what is known about the effects of the military deployment cycle on young children, including attachment patterns, intense emotions and behavioral changes and suggest an ecological approach for supporting military families with infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Design—Descriptive Literature Review

Sample

• N: 101
• Subject Ages: 7 months at recruit, followed until 67 months
• Location: United States, Iowa
• SES: Broad range of income and education
• Eligibility: Two-parent families with normally developing children
• Additional: 90% of mothers were white, 84% of fathers were white

Hypotheses

1. The child’s resentful opposition serves as a mechanism or mediator that accounts for links between parental power assertion and child future antisocial behavior.
2. The early history of the parent-child relationship, reflected in the child’s attachment organization, moderates this mediational chain. 

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Children’s attachment security at 15 months - Strange Situation with both mothers and fathers
• Mother’s and father’s power assertion in discipline contexts - 25 and 38 months coded contexts, in the lab during naturalist situations
• Children’s resentful opposition at 52 months -
  • children’s defiance: coded contexts in the lab during Do and Don’t contexts
  • children’s negative emotional tone in interactions with parents: negative affect was coded during naturalistic observations
  • children’s unresponsiveness to parents: obtained by reversing the scores of the child responsiveness to parents coded during naturalistic observations
  • composite of children’s resentful opposition: the three scores were intercorrelated, therefore standardizing and aggregating them into one score for children and mothers and one score for children and fathers
• Children’s antisocial disruptive behavior problems at 67 months -
  • the Child Symptom Inventory
  • the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits
  • the Macarthur Health Behavior Questionnaire
  • the Composite of antisocial and disruptive behavior

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 956 families
• Subject Ages: 15 years
• Location: 10 geographically separated sites from the NICHD data set
• SES: Higher mean household income ($39,550 versus $33,570), almost 22% of families had an income-to-needs ratio of less than 2.0
• Eligibility: All cases with a valid measure at age 15
• Additional:
  • 81.4% Caucasian, 12% African American
  • 49.9% boys
  • Participant families were:
    • Less likely to be of minority status (18.6% versus 21.8%)
    • More likely to consist of the biological mother living with her husband (79.1% versus 71.1%)
    • Parents were more likely to have attended college (72.1% versus 60.9%)

Hypotheses

1. Reciprocal patterns of relations will emerge between externalizing behavior and the three aspects of parenting observed from infancy through adolescence, but the impact of parenting processes on externalizing behavior will diminish as children age.
2. Cumulative effect with externalizing behavior will become increasingly stable.
3. Maternal sensitivity during early and middle childhood will continue to exert an influence on externalizing behavior at age 15 via self-control, an alternative to the idea of a simple cumulative effect.
4. Self-control will serve to mediate relations between parenting and externalizing problems at age 15.
5. Monitoring at age 15 will show a negative relation to harshness at age 11 and externalizing at age 15.
6. Higher levels of productive activity at home at age 11 will show a negative relation to externalizing behavior via its connection with monitoring, as it reflects higher levels of trust and communication between parent and child.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

All assessments were taken at multiple age points to capture cumulative experience during particular developmental periods:

• Opportunity for productive activity - the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory (Caldwell and Bradley, 1984) at 15 months, 36 months, third grade and fifth grade
• Parental harshness - the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984) items that tap expressions of anger, annoyance, physical punishment and intrusiveness to measure parental harshness
• Maternal sensitivity - coded videos of 15-minute semi-structured interactions in which the mother and child played in two or three age-appropriate activities
• Monitoring - mother report, 11-item questionnaire
• Self-control - the Social Skills Rating Scale (SSRS; Gresham & Elliot, 1990), Self-control subscale
• Externalizing behavior - the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1992) mother and caregiver-teacher report form of the CBCL (Achenbach, 1997)

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 120
• Subject Ages: 4 years
• Location: United States; China; Japan
• SES: Various
• Eligibility: Full-time preschools at both university and community samples in each location
• Additional:
  • Beijing, China
    • Only two of the children (a pair of twins) were reported to have siblings
    • Parental education ranged from middle school to   graduate-level training for both mothers and fathers
  • U.S. sample was collected in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan
    • Over half had one or more siblings
    • Parental education ranged from high school to graduate-level training for both mothers and fathers
  • Tokyo, Japan
    • Over half of the Japanese children had at least one sibling and 11 of the children had two siblings
    • Most parents reported being married
    • Parental education ranged from middle school to graduate-level training for both mothers and fathers
  • Some demographic characteristics differed significantly between countries
    • Chinese parents were slightly younger than those in Japan
    • Maternal education was significantly greater in the United States than in Japan or China
    • There were no significant cross-national differences in paternal education
    • Relatively few Japanese mothers were employed
    • U.S. parents reported significantly higher levels of divorce or separation than those in the other two countries

Hypotheses

1. Low levels of child inhibitory control would be associated with elevated levels of child externalizing problems in all three cultures.
2. Indices of parental harsh physical and emotional discipline would be associated with elevated externalizing scores in U.S. preschoolers, and it would be determined whether this association would generalize to Chinese and Japanese preschoolers.
3. The cross-cultural validity of integrative models would determine whether associations between parenting risk, child self-regulation difficulties and child externalizing combined in ways that reflected additive, interactional or mediational mechanisms.
4. Relationships between children’s inhibitory control capabilities and early externalizing problems would be moderated by child gender within each country.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Child inhibitory control in the laboratory - composite of three Stroop-like switching tasks commonly used with  preschoolers: the Grass/Snow Task, Luria’s Hand Game and the Day/Night Stroop Task
• Maternal rating of inhibitory control - abbreviated version of Rothbart’s Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Ahadi, et al., 1993)
• Nonverbal intelligence - the Block Design subscale of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, revised (WPPSI-R; Wechsler, 1989)
• Child externalizing problems - the Child Behavior Checklist/1.5-5
• Parenting behavior - Socialization of Moral Affect questionnaire-Preschool Parent (SOMA-PP; Denham, et al., 1997)

Design—Correlational, cross-cultural

Sample

• N: 102
• Subject Ages: Kindergarten children
• Location: Germany, Konstanz
• SES: Middle class
• Eligibility: Parents of public kindergarten children who agreed to participate
• Additional:
  • All families were of a European cultural background
  • 80% of the children lived in a two-parent household
  • All mothers had at least 12 years of schooling

Hypotheses

1. Maternal warmth will be positively related to the child’s behavioral regulation.
2. Maternal responsiveness to distress would correlate positively with the child’s internalization of rules of conduct.
3. Children’s gender and effortful control would interact with parenting behavior in predicting self-regulation skills.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Maternal warmth - the Child Rearing Practices Report-Q Sort
• Maternal responsiveness to distress - the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale
• Behavior regulation - the Snack Delay task of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery-Preschool Version
• Internalization of rules of conduct - Maternal Reports of Conscience Development
• Effortful control - the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire

Design—Cross-sectional

Sample

• N: 526 - 163 males and 363 females
• Subject Ages: Mean 19.22 years
• Location: Not available
• SES: 63% reported a total parental income between $30,000 and $99,999, 26.4% reported total parental income in excess of $100,000
• Eligibility: Individuals aged within the developmental time frame of emerging adulthood
• Additional:
  • Participants were enrolled in an introductory psychology course
  • 76.2% Caucasion, 9.7% Hispanic, 6.5% African American, 1.9% Asian, 3.6% other ethnic background

Hypotheses

1. Perceived authoritative parenting will be related inversely with perceived harshness of discipline, whereas perceived authoritarian parenting will be related directly with perceived harshness of discipline.
2. Perceived authoritative parenting will be related inversely to poor emotional adjustment in emerging adults, and perceived authoritarian parenting and perceived harshness of discipline will be related directly to poor emotional adjustment in emerging adults.
3. Perceived discipline strategies will mediate the effect of perceived parenting styles and emerging adult emotional adjustment. That is, perceived parenting styles will share a significant relationship with emerging adult emotional adjustment independently, but this effect will be eliminated when examined in the context of perceived discipline strategies.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Parenting style -
  • items from the care and overprotection scale of the Parental Bonding Instrument
  • three subscales from the Parental Authority Questionnaire
• Discipline strategy - Conflict Tactics Scale, Parent-Child version
• Emotional adjustment -
  • the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory
  • the Beck Depression Inventory
  • the Manifest Anxiety Scale

Design—Correlational

Sample

• N: 1,049
• Subject Ages: Grades 1-5 to Grades 6-12
• SES: Working-class community
• Eligibility: Children in the age range at recruitment
• Location: United States, Oregon
• Additional:
  • 86% Caucasian, 7% Hispanic, 1% Asian American, 6% mixed race/other
  • 7% of mothers and 11% of fathers had high school diploma, 71% of mothers and 66% of fathers had postsecondary education

Hypotheses

1. Four parenting classes were expected: Authoritative (high on positive parenting (PP)/monitoring and low on inconsistent discipline (ID)); Indulgent (high on PP and ID; low on monitoring); Authoritarian (high on monitoring; low on PP and ID); and Uninvolved (high on ID; low on PP/monitoring).
2. Children in the authoritative class will have the lowest levels of internalizing symptoms, followed by children raised by parents in the indulgent and authoritarian classes. Uninvolved parenting would result in high internalizing symptoms and possible steep increases over time.
3. Substance abuse and antisocial behavior will be low for all, with increases in children with parents in the indulgent and uninvolved classes.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Parent behavior - the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire with three subscales: monitoring/supervision, inconsistent discipline and positive parenting
• Child cigarette and alcohol use - yearly questionnaire in grades 6-12
• Child antisocial behavior and internalizing symptoms - the Child Behavior Checklist, abbreviated version

Design—Longitudinal

Sample

• N: 160
• Subject Ages: Parents of children ages 3 to 6 years
• Location: United States, Vermont and Arkansas
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Not available
• Additional:
  • 6.5% parents had less than high school education, 17.4% had a high school diploma, 76.1% had some college education
  • Recruited through Head Start

Hypotheses

1. Parents’ use of harsh discipline will be positively correlated with both boys’ and girls’ disruptive behavior.
2. Permissive discipline will be related to boys’ disruptive behavior.
3. Higher levels of both harsh and permissive discipline will be positively correlated with higher levels of disruptive behavior.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Demographic questionnaire
• Dysfunctional discipline practices when faced with problem situations - two subscales from the Parenting Scale
• Child disruptive behaviors - the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory

Design—Cross-sectional

Sample

• N: 410
• Subject Ages: Not available
• Location: Republic of Ireland, a large maternity unit
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: First-time mother aged 18 years and over with a singleton baby and a medically uncomplicated pregnancy or baby full term at delivery; baby discharged with mother; English as first language; Caucasian.

Objective

1. To examine the relationships between social support, maternal parental self-efficacy and postnatal depression in first-time mothers at six weeks post-delivery.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Social support - researcher-developed instrument
• Maternal parental self-efficacy - the Perceived Maternal Parental Self-Efficacy Tool (Barnes & Adamson-Macedo, 2007)
• Postnatal depression - the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (Cox, et al., 1987)

Design—Descriptive correlational

Sample

• N: 157
• Subject Ages: Mothers 27.0 years, infants 7.9 months
• Location: Not available
• SES: Household income of less than $50,000
• Eligibility: All mothers had access to the Internet in their home and a baby less than 18 months old who was their first and only child
• Additional:
  • First marriage, married an average of 3.26 years
  • Most of the mothers:
    • Were White non-Hispanic
    • Had graduated from college
  • About half of the mothers worked, some working from home, with the average number of hours worked in a week of 12.18

Hypotheses

1. New mothers will utilize the computer and Internet every day, with at least some of this time spent on social networking and blogging.
2. The majority of new mothers will report reasons for blogging that align with perceptions of social support, such as maintaining contact with family and friends.
3. Media social supports, such as blogging and social networking, will be associated with new mothers’ abilities to stay connected with others in their social network and with stronger perceptions of social support (mesosystem).
4. Social support will be negatively related to mycrosystemic processes including parenting stress, marital conflict, and maternal depression and positively related with marital satisfaction. Decreased parenting stress is expected to be associated with decreased maternal depression and marital conflict. Marital conflict is expected to be negatively related to marital satisfaction.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Media use and daily life - author questionnaire
• Computer and Internet use - author questionnaire
• Reasons for blogging - measure developed by Lenhart and Fox
• Feelings of connectedness - author questionnaire
• Social support - the Relationships with Other People Scale
• Parenting stress - a 30-item, modified version of the 101-item Parenting Stress Index
• Marital conflict - select items from the RELATE assessment battery
• Marital satisfaction - the Quality of Marriage Index (QMI)
• Maternal depression - the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale

Design—Correlational

Sample

• N: 432
• Subject Ages: Mean maternal age of 49.6 years
• Location: Not available
• SES: Not available
• Eligibility: Mothers of undergraduate students from an upper Midwest college
• Additional: 96% Caucasian

Hypotheses

1. Maternal work patterns would be significantly related to midlife life satisfaction.
2. Adopting an authoritative parenting style would be beneficial for mothers in terms of their self-reported life satisfaction.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Parenting style - the Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) revised
• Satisfaction with life - the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larson & Griffin, 1985)
• Work role and stress - author questionnaire

Design—Descriptive

Objective

1. To review of some key findings at the animal level that establish experience-induced structural brain plasticity in response to social influences

Design—Descriptive literature review

Sample

• N: 438,381 from the Gallup World Poll, which began in 2005 and collected data annually from representative samples in 154 countries, representing 95% of the world’s adult population. From 2005 to 2009, the survey sampled around 1,000 individuals from each country, though samples differed depending on population size in each country. Not all countries were sampled each year, and until 2008, only 78 countries were sampled in all three waves. In contrast to previous international surveys, the Gallup World Poll covered more poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and was nationally representative for a larger number of countries. For this study, the authors looked at data collected during 2005 to 2009.
• Subject Ages: 15 to 75 years
• Location: 154 countries
• SES: All
• Eligibility: Civilian, non-institutionalized population

Hypothesis

1. Low- and middle-income countries’ social connectedness and volunteering are more important to the health of individuals than in high-income countries.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

• Statistical computations were applied to the data set compiled from telephone surveys and face-to-face interviewing. Further details of the sampling frame are provided in the Gallup Annual Report (2008).

Design—Correlational