Work hard in school, graduate from a top college, establish a high-paying professional career, enjoy the long-lasting reward of happiness. This is the American Dream--and yet basic questions at the heart of this competitive journey remain unanswered. Does competitive success, even rarified entry into the Ivy League and the top one percent of…

This case study provides an account of the conceptual and ethical aspects of developing a 3-year research project into youth transitions, examining several contextual challenges that arose during its development. It highlights the importance of developing a rigorous conceptual framework and provides a practical example of the process of its…

Developing the ability to speak in a foreign language is an arduous task. This is because it involves the mastery of different language subsystems, simultaneous focus on comprehension and production, and the impact of a range of social factors. This challenge is further compounded in situations in which learners have limited access to the target…

The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) was begun in 1958 to trace the effects of aging in humans and to distinguish between the true effects of aging and those processes, including disease, socioeconomic disadvantage, and lack of educational opportunity, that may appear or become more pronounced with time but are biologically irrelevant…

This book reports on the Illinois Valedictorian Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of the life paths of 81 high school valedictorians. Chapter 1 describes the 1981 high school graduation of the valedictorians and traces the diverging life paths of two top working-class students. Chapter 2 plots the road to the top of the high school class.…

The lives of 505 individuals born in 1955 on the island of Kauai (Hawaii) were followed from the prenatal period to adulthood to elucidate their resilience in the face of childhood adversity or their recovery in later years. The Kauai Longitudinal Study monitored the impact of a variety of biological and psychosocial risk factors, stressful life…

Noting that scientific observation of children's dreaming offers unparalleled opportunities to study experience of conscious mental states, this book presents findings from two studies on children's dreaming. Following an argument outlining the problems in equating dreaming with perception, the book explains the use of sleep laboratories and…

This book reports on a 40-year longitudinal study of factors that foster or inhibit creativity over time. Students in elementary grades were originally evaluated from 1958 to 1964. Follow-up in 1980 led to development of a Manifesto for Children which summarized conclusions in the form of guidance for aphorisms such as "Don't be afraid to fall in…

This book is the second to present the results on a study of how children's practice of speech, as shaped by family interaction, affects learning to talk. Participating in the study were 42 diverse families with young children. Each month for 2.5 years the interactions between 42 one- to two-year-olds and their parents were recorded as the…

This single-volume resource provides detailed information on current large-scale and longitudinal research studies focusing on early childhood developmentthe situations and experiences of young American children. Twenty-eight studies are profiled, addressing such issues as early childhood interventions for children in poverty, neighborhood…

This book describes how American teenagers develop attitudes and acquire skills to achieve their career goals and expectations. It presents findings of a study that followed the progress of more than 1,000 students from 13 school districts from 1992-97. Focus is on the experiences of adolescents as they were reported in the first few years of data…

This book describes a 30-year longitudinal study of the impact of urbanization and modernization on changing family organization, child rearing practices, and gender roles in India and their contribution to women's life satisfaction. The book is organized around a series of personal encounters recorded in field notes, focusing on the mothers,…

This monograph details the Notre Dame Parenting Project, a comprehensive longitudinal study of the lives of adolescent mothers and their children from pregnancy through the first 8 years of life, describing how their respective developmental trajectories are interwoven and linked to the social contexts in which they live. A total of 281…

This analysis of how college affects students is based on the largest nationwide study of student development ever undertaken, a ten-year effort by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program of the American Council on Education and the University of California at Los Angeles. Using longitudinal data from over 200,000 students and 300…