Little is known about the extent to which the biological embedding of promotive and protective factors pre-loads a capacity for resilience across the life course. If researchers better understood how promotive and protective factors operate biologically we could better determine what causes depression, which children are most at risk, and perhaps most critically, the optimal times to intervene to delay (or prevent) first onsets of depression. We will address these gaps by discovering epigenetically-linked processes and time periods when positive life experiences promote resilience to depression.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families that began in 1968. As of 2020, it has collected data on the same families and their descendants for 41 waves over 52 years. In the 1990s, PSID began collecting rich and detailed data on children born into these families as part of the original PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS) and, starting in the mid-2000s, has closely followed these children’s transition across the young adult years through the biennial PSID Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS). Young adults in PSID families become members of the Core PSID themselves and receive the full biennial interview when they form their own economically independent households, and then the study follows them for the rest of their lives.

In order to continue capturing the transition into adulthood for all PSID children, the TAS will conduct two waves of data collection in 2021 and 2023. A major portion of the TAS samples will comprise of young adults who previously participated in CDS. Participants in CDS include those from the original study, which began collecting detailed and extensive data on children in PSID families in 1997 on a cohort of children aged 0-12 years, as well as the new CDS, fielded in 2014 and 2019. This ongoing study is collecting information on all children aged 0-17 years in PSID families born after the launch of the original CDS. The 2021 and 2023 waves of the TAS will also include many respondents who have participated in one or more prior waves of TAS, allowing us to trace their transition into adulthood.

Our specific aims are to collect approximately 70 minutes of information in 2021 and 2023 from all PSID youth aged 18-28 years and to document and distribute these data through the publicly available and free PSID Online Data Center. In 2019, the TAS adopted a mixed-mode design using internet interviewing as well as computer-assisted telephone interviewing to collect new retrospective content. We are building on this revision by collecting data on childhood circumstances and exposures and new information on young adult transitions in key domains such as family formation and change, health, and living arrangements. We are conducting interviews with approximately 3,800 young adults in 2021 and 2023. These data are vital for our understanding of the contemporary transition from adolescence into adulthood within its intergenerational family context. By augmenting the panel information in the CDS and Core PSID, this project will provide a rich CDS-TAS-PSID panel of children from birth and preschool through primary and secondary school and then through entry into the world of work or of higher education in conjunction with early family formation. Although a full and detailed panel from birth to young adulthood is valuable in its own right, the information on these individuals will grow further as they continue in Core PSID for the rest of their lives.

This project will include investigators at five Michigan institutions and will focus on three primary aims:

AIM 1: To investigate the effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals, assessed across two generations, on ECHO outcomes.

AIM 2: To assess the effect of maternal nutritional/weight status in pregnancy on ECHO outcomes.

AIM 3: To assess effects of pregnancy infection and inflammation (assessed in maternal blood, placenta and newborn blood spots) on ECHO outcomes.

This project will continue the collection of data on children in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that is currently funded under NICHD Grant R01HD52646. The existing grant supported the PSID Child Development Supplement, which followed a cohort of children in PSID families who were 0?12 years of age in 1997 through three waves of data collection and focused on understanding the socio-demographic, psychological, and economic aspects of childhood in an on-going nationally-representative longitudinal study of families. By 2014, all of the children in the original cohort will have reached adulthood, and a new generation of children will have replaced them in PSID families. Our goal is to collect information in 2014 on all children aged 0?17 years in this new generation, shifting the orientation from a cohort study to one that obtains information on the childhood experiences of all children in PSID families, who will become primary respondents in the Core PSID when they form their own economically-independent households. These new data will support studies of health, development, and well-being in childhood; the relationship between children?s characteristics and contemporaneous family decisionmaking and behavior; and the effects of childhood factors on subsequent social, demographic, economic, and health outcomes over the entire lifecourse for these individuals as they are followed into the future as part of PSID. The specific aims are to: (1) Design and field a new PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS) in 2014, collecting data on approximately 6,800 children aged 0?17 years through interviews with primary caregivers (typically the mother) and with older children themselves (aged 9?17 years); (2) Collect weekday and weekend time diaries and obtain saliva samples (for subsequent genetic analysis) for all children and their primary caregivers; and (3) Process, document, and distribute the new CDS data, with scale composites, time diary recodes, and links to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) and Private School Survey (PSS). The new CDS will provide rich data on a large, nationally-representative sample of children that includes an over-sample of African American children and a representative sample of immigrant children. CDS data will be available free of charge through the PSID Online Data Center, which provides customized extracts and codebooks using a cross-year index of variables across all waves as well as other variable-selection options.

The University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab is a partnership between Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research. The Youth Policy Lab helps community and government agencies make better decisions by measuring what really works. We are data experts who believe that the government can and must do better for the people of Michigan. We’re also parents and community members who dream of a brighter future for all of our children. At the Youth Policy Lab, we’re working to make that dream a reality by strengthening programs that address some of our most pressing social challenges.

We recognize that the wellbeing of youth is intricately linked to the wellbeing of families and communities, so we engage in work that impacts all age ranges. Using rigorous evaluation design and data analysis, we’re working closely with our partners to build a future where public investments are based on strong evidence, so all Michiganders have a pathway to prosperity.

Five core values provide the foundation for YPL’s work:

• Quality: We are dedicated to the highest quality data analysis and evaluation.
• Partnership: We put our partners’ priorities at the center of our work.
• Empowerment: We help partners get comfortable using data to improve their work.
• Equity: We believe that everyone deserves a fair chance at a good life.
• Outcomes: We measure outcomes so that programs and policies are based on evidence of what really works.

Samples of YPL projects:

• The Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP)
• SafeCare Evaluation
• High5s
• TRAILS
• Career and Technical Education
• and more

Monitoring the Future (MTF) study is an ongoing epidemiological and etiological research and reporting project that began in 1975. In addition to being a basic research study, MTF has become one of the nation’s most relied upon sources of information on emerging trends in illicit drug, alcohol, and tobacco use among American adolescents, college students, and young and middle-aged adults. Nationally representative samples of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students (about 16,000 in 140 schools per year per grade) will be surveyed annually from 2013 to 2017. A companion study continues mail follow-up surveys of high school graduates at modal ages 19-30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and now 55. The study’s cohort-sequential longitudinal design permits the measurement and differentiation of three types of change: age (developmental), period (historical), and cohort. The study allows examination the importance of many hypothesis on psychological, behavioral, and social determinants of drug use (including attitudes and beliefs, counter-advertising, role-modeling, and access), as well as a range of potential consequences (including physical and psychological health, status attainment, role performance, and drug abuse and dependence).

Marilyn Sinkewicz is a health disparities researcher who examines the social, economic and historical causes and consequences of mental health conditions. Previously she was Director of Research at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the University of Chicago Health Lab. She consults with local governments and communities about public health and public safety.

Dr. Sinkewicz completed her PhD and MS at Columbia University. She was a post doctoral fellow in the NIMH Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program and in the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program.

Megan Patrick’s published research focuses on the development of substance use and consequences across the lifespan. Her interests include motivations for substance use, the prevention of health risk behaviors, statistical methods for modeling behavior and behavior change, and mobile and web-based survey methodology. She has been the PI of 10 NIH-funded projects and Co-Investigator on many others. She is the Principal Investigator of the Monitoring the Future Panel Study, which is a national study following participants from ages 18 to 65 since the mid-1970s. Her other current NIH-funded R01 projects focus on high-intensity drinking, simultaneous alcohol and marijuana use, and adaptive interventions to reduce consequences of young adult substance use.

Dr. O’Malley received his Ph.D. degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1975. His primary affiliation is with the Monitoring the Future study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He is also affiliated with the Youth, Education, and Society study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His publications deal with alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use and related attitudes and beliefs, and with obesity among secondary school students. His research interests include causes and consequences of drug use, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, social epidemiology of drug use, school policies and practices related to student health, and longitudinal survey data analysis techniques.

Dr. Johnston’s research has been based on two seminal national research studies: Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of American Youth (MTF) and the Youth, Education, and Society (YES) study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, respectively. MTF is an epidemiological study that reports current levels and trends in the use of a wide range of substances, from cigarettes and alcohol to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and many other illicit drugs. Its design allows researchers to address age, cohort, and period effects on the use of these substances. Johnston and his collaborators have played an agenda-setting function by calling attention early to problems that are emerging and ones that are receding among youth. They also have demonstrated how particular attitudes and beliefs about each drug play a major role in young peoples’ use of the drug, which has helped to guide a great deal of the nation’s drug and alcohol prevention strategy.