Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Using four large national data sets to classify risk profiles groups and profile stability across the first three years of life.

Fri, October 5, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Doubletree Hilton, Room: Tempe

Abstract

Background. There is a well-established relationship between early life adversity and poor physical and mental health outcomes later in life. To date this body of literature has captured and characterized a myriad of adverse events and environments. However, few studies have had the ability to examine the co-occurrence of early life risk factors in samples that are sufficiently large to identify meaningful groups and with sufficient diversity to be applicable on a national scale. In this study, the co-occurrence and stability of family risk characteristics from target child’s 1st and 3rd year of life was assessed. Methods. Latent class analyses (LCA; McCutcheon, 1987) were used to explore how the most commonly assessed risk factors in the literature (e.g., welfare utilization, poverty, family conflict, birth/prenatal complications, housing instability, low maternal education, and household composition) coalesce into different profiles age 1 and age 3, as well as changes in class composition (i.e., families moving in and out of high-risk), using data combined from four large national studies of early child development collectively capturing a broad spectrum of families – the NICHD Study of Early Child Care Development (NICHD SECCYD), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Birth Cohort (ECLS-B); the Early Head Start (EHS) Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES); and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). Further, a best fitting formula for determining risk profiles with minimal data points was derived for use with less comprehensive data sets. Results. Participants on average scored in the relatively high range of risk, with ample variability and many of the risk factors co-occurring together. Both age 1 and age 3 analyses revealed three risk profiles (Figure 1). The rates of class membership are displayed in Table 1. Between age 1 and age 3, there was a shift to greater class membership in the low risk profile (90%), with remaining 3% and 6% assigned to the high risk-high instability and –lower instability profiles, respectively.
Discussion. The set of early risk variables included in this study represents a transection of economic, social, and relationship risk factors that often co-occur and have been linked to negative long-term outcomes. The results from this study allow for a better understanding of how different risk factors co-occur. In addition to highlighting the remarkable resilience of families facing adversity, these results highlight that families facing resource instability are at greatest risk for sustained exposure to adversity.

Authors