This paper reviews research on the design and effectiveness of preschools in the United States. Three randomized controlled trials that enrolled roughly 350 total children in demonstration studies during the 1960s and 1970s shape much of the current discussion of preschool. We examine what these studies and more recent ones based on random…

Children exposed to Interparental Verbal Conflict (IPVC) exert negative spillovers on their peers. Using nationally representative survey data from middle schools in China, focusing on schools that randomly assign students into classrooms, and using both (1) within-school, across-classroom variation and (2) within-student, year-to-year variation…

Causal search algorithms have been effectively applied in different fields including biology, genetics, climate science, medicine, and neuroscience. However, there have been scant applications of these methods in social and behavioral sciences. This article provides an illustrative example of how causal search algorithms can shed light on…

Existing research suggests that there is a relation between academic/cognitive deficits and externalizing behavior in young children, but the direction of this relation is unclear. The present study tested competing models of the relation between academic/cognitive functioning and behavior problems during early childhood. Participants were 221…

An analytical approach was employed to compare sensitivity of causal effect estimates with different assumptions on treatment noncompliance and non-response behaviors. The core of this approach is to fully clarify bias mechanisms of considered models and to connect these models based on common parameters. Focusing on intention-to-treat analysis,…