3-054 - Person Centered Approaches to Understanding Resilience and Risk in Head Start Families

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Resilience researchers aim to identify factors that may promote or interfere with adaptive outcomes across multiple domains. Such work has used both person-centered and variable-centered approaches (Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker, 2000; Mendez, Fantuzzo, and Cicchetti, 2002); however, variable-centered strategies yield findings that may obscure important subgroups (von Eye & Bergman, 2003). In contrast, person-centered analyses can be used to examine the holistic nature of the individual and derive qualitatively different groups of individuals, in order to examine different processes or outcomes according to group membership (Bergman & Magnusson, 1997; Keller, Spieker, & Gilchrist, 2005). Often, one factor in isolation is less relevant than a combination, or profile of characteristics, that best explains outcomes. Employing person-centered methods with low-income samples in early childhood may be of particular importance to inform early intervention programs, such as Head Start, with respect to identifying children or parents who would most benefit from intervention due to heightened risk for maladaptive outcomes. To this end, Paper 1 confirms distinct profiles of children’s physiological stress response, indexed by cortisol and sAA, and associations with familial risk. Paper 2 relates profiles of children’s attributes, namely emotion regulation/lability and cognitive skills, to changes in peer competence during one year of preschool. Lastly, Paper 3 examines profiles of parent risk factors and associations with parents’ cognitions and behaviors related to educational involvement. Together, these papers demonstrate the utility of this methodology for understanding the heterogeneity in factors related to adaptation and maladjustment for low-income preschool children and their families.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Julia Mendez Smith, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Discussant

• Sandra Barrueco, The Catholic Univ of America

Individual Presentations

• Children's Profiles of Physiological Stress Response and Risk in Head Start Families - Presenting Author: Diana Westerberg, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

• Cognitive and Emotional Attributes: Influences on the Peer Relations of Low Income, African American Preschoolers - Presenting Author: Julia Mendez Smith, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Emily Andrews, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Diana Westerberg, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

• Parents’ Risk Profiles as Predictors of Parent Involvement Cognitions and Behaviors - Presenting Author: Dore R. LaForett, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Julia Mendez Smith, University of North Carolina at Greensboro