Education and the Transition to Adulthood
With several large, new funding initiatives in the area of education, transitions to adulthood, and the labor force, new faculty additions, and the important contributions of several key senior investigators, the PRC is playing a leading role in this important area of population research. The anchor for this emerging area is our NICHD-funded Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study. Chandra Muller is the principal investigator of the effort, which also involves UT researchers from three different departments as well as participants from several other universities. This five year project, funded with over $4.5 million in total costs, is collecting and analyzing the high school transcript records of the Wave III National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) sample members (N=18,700) and a sample of their partners (N=2,000). A number of other PRC faculty researchers from Sociology, Human Ecology, and Economics, are very active in analyzing education and labor force issues in the United States.
Area Projects
Race, School Transitions, and Child Adolescent Well-Being
Principal Investigator: Aprile D. Benner
Additional Investigators: Robert L. Crosnoe, Co-Investigator
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
The objective of this research is to explore how school transitions that occur early in the life course affect students' socio-emotional well-being (i.e., psychological functioning and social relationships) and health behaviors, and how disruptions in these domains affect later educational performance. My research will use a sequential mixed-methods design, with an initial quantitative component informing subsequent qualitative inquiry. The quantitative research will draw on three national, longitudinal data sets targeting different stages of the early life course: the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort for the transition to full- time schooling, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development for the transition to middle school, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health for the transition to high school. Using these datasets, I will address three specific aims: 1) determine racial/ethnic differences in students' socio- emotional well-being and health behaviors across each school transition, 2) identify the school contexts in which disruptions in socio-emotional well-being and health factors-and racial/ethnic differences in these disruptions- are most and least pronounced, and 3) assess how disruptions in socio-emotional well-being and health behaviors during school transitions affect racial/ethnic differences in later educational performance. I will use a number of quantitative analysis techniques (repeated measures, propensity scoring, linear regression, structural equation modeling) to examine transition experiences, the moderating influence of race/ethnicity and school context, and the relationship of transition experiences to distal educational outcomes. Quantitative results will inform the development of a qualitative interview protocol to be used with a diverse sample of 40 students. This qualitative research seeks to identify the specific psychosocial mechanisms by which school transitions can be disruptive to socio-emotional and health functioning for different race/ethnic groups, focusing particularly on differential effects of school transitions for each racial/ethnic group. This research will expand our understanding of how school transitions affect students beyond the well-documented academic challenges. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The expectation is that school transitions will disrupt students' socio-emotional well-being and their health behaviors, and these disruptions will be most pronounced among certain race/ethnic groups. Such research will highlight critical intervention points in students' educational careers and identify specific tools for policy intervention as a way of addressing well-documented racial/ethnic differences in educational attainment that underlie corresponding disparities in income, wealth, fertility, and mortality in the U.S.
Education as a Developmental Phenomenon
Principal Investigator: Robert L. Crosnoe
Funded by: William T. Grant Foundation
The broad motivation for this five-year project is to provide a meeting ground for developmental and educational research in the quantitative study of adolescence. Reflecting this motivation, this project is structured by a general conceptual framework that is translated into four specific components. In the general framework, education is viewed in developmental terms by exploring the intertwining of adolescents' individual trajectories with their social convoys within larger contexts. The four components derived from this general framework consider: 1) the intertwining of academic trajectories and intergenerational social convoys, in the form of the associations between adolescents' math/science pathways and their trajectories of parental involvement and teacher-mentoring during high school, 2) the context-specific nature of this intertwining between academic trajectories and intergenerational social convoys, as captured by variations in these associations by level of economic disadvantage in the family and the school, 3) the intertwining of academic trajectories and intragenerational social convoys, in the form of the associations between adolescent's position in their math/science course-sequences and the academic norms of their close friends, coursemates, and schoolmates, and 4) the context-specific nature of this intertwining between academic trajectories and intragenerational social convoys, as captured by variations in immigration-related differences in math/science pathways by the three levels of peer norms. To pursue these four components, growth curve and multi-level modeling techniques will be applied to multi-source survey and school transcript data from two nationally representative studies of American adolescents: the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88-92) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth).
As a whole, this project explores academic experiences at the nexus of institutional structures, interpersonal relations, and demographic populations in order to pursue an ecological, developmental understanding of education and to identify mechanisms for addressing inequalities in the educational system and larger society. Thus, it balances conceptual goals-cross-pollinating human development and education, taking dynamic approaches, considering adolescence as a foundation of long-term experiences-with applied objectives-focusing on academic and interpersonal factors that are relevant to both individual functioning and societal inequality while also being amenable to policy reform.
Collaborative Research: Students with Learning Disabilities: STEM Pathways in the Social Context
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Rebecca Callahan, University of Georgia
Funded by: National Science Foundation
Improving young adults' preparation to enter into STEM fields is crucial for the economic well-being of our nation; students with learning disabilities face a special set of social and academic needs in their pathways towards STEM preparation. A rich body of literature focuses on the STEM preparation of adolescents as a whole, however we know far less about the processes and pathways of students with learning disabilities. Focusing on college preparatory STEM achievement outcomes, we explore the effects of high school context, social and academic processes, as well as variations by demographic subgroup (racial, ethnic and linguistic minority, gender, class) among the population of students with learning disabilities. The need to increase diversity in participation in STEM fields can be addressed by tapping in to traditionally underrepresented groups, such as students with learning disabilities who may possess many talents yet also face unique barriers.
STEM in the New Millennium: Preparation, Pathways and Diversity
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Kelly Raley; Catherine Riegle-Crumb
Funded by: National Science Foundation
This study will use multiple contemporary longitudinal, nationally representative datasets to study the educational pathways into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, beginning in high school and before and extending into early adult careers. We argue that there are several factors that have not been previously adequately addressed in the literature on STEM pathways. First, high school indicators of STEM achievement and the convergence of these indicators may be crucial for understanding success in higher education and in the labor force. Further, understanding how the contexts of postsecondary institutions themselves foster students’ persistence and achievement in STEM as well as an accumulation of STEM knowledge and skills independent of degrees earned are key components of our study. Finally, we focus on the connection between STEM education and the labor force, broadening the usual treatment of this pathway as a linear relationship between degree attainment and entry into a STEM occupation, and focusing on labor force participation in non-STEM occupations that may require STEM literacy. Our study will provide insights into increasing the participation and success of all college students in the STEM fields that are of value to both policymakers and postsecondary institutions.
Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Robert Crosnoe, Co-Investigator
Kenneth A. Frank, Co-Investigator
R. Kelly Raley, Co-Investigator
Pedro Reyes, Co-Investigator
Kathryn S. Schiller, Co-Investigator
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation
The Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study provides an opportunity to examine the effects of education on adolescent behavior, academic achievement, and cognitive and psychosocial development in the 1990s. The AHAA study expands the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) - one of the decade's most important studies of adolescents - to include detailed measures of academic progress and high school curriculum.
Add Health is a nationally-representative, school-based study that explores the causes of health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 and their outcomes in young adulthood. Add Health seeks to examine how social contexts (families, friends, peers, schools, neighborhoods, and communities) influence adolescents' health and risk behaviors. While Add Health is a rich resource of data on adolescent development in multiple contexts, Add Health has limited information on the academic trajectories of youth. Thus, the AHAA study contributes to the Add Health by providing the high school transcripts of Add Health Wave III sample members.
During the Wave III data collection, Add Health sample members were given a Transcript Release Form (TRF) which authorized Add Health to identify schools last attended by study participants and request official transcripts from the schools. At this time, Add Health sample members were generally no longer in high school. The youngest Add Health grade-level cohort, those in 7th grade at Wave I, were the high school class of 2000, while the oldest cohort, those in 12th grade at Wave I, generally had been out of school for over six years.
Beginning in Fall 2001, high school transcripts and other data were collected from all Add Health high schools except two special education schools that did not maintain students' academic transcripts, and from approximately 1,400 additional schools where Add Health respondents last attended high school. Approximately 91% of Wave III respondents signed a valid TRF and from August 2001 through June 2002, AHAA collected high school transcripts for most respondents (N= approximately 12,000).
Additional information was collected from the schools last attended by the AHAA Wave III sample. Used primarily for coding the transcripts, school administrators were asked to complete a school survey about the grading practices, school policies, and special programs. Schools were also asked to list the textbooks used in each math and science course. Finally, secondary data was linked to each school last attended by Add Health respondents, even when transcripts were not collected.
The transcripts were coded using procedures designed for the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The transcript data provide detailed information on students' grades, courses taken, the overarching academic structure of each student's school, and information on the last school each student attended. The AHAA data provides indicators of (1) educational achievement, (2) course taking patterns, (3) curricular exposure, and (4) educational contexts within and between schools, all of which are linked to the Add Health survey data.
Project website
Gender Differences in Science and Math: Diversity and the Role of Social Context
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Catherine Riegle-Crumb, Co-Principal Investigator
Consultants: R. Kelly Raley, Kenneth Frank, Katy Schiller
Funded by: National Science Foundation
This project is studying the effects of social contexts-in the school and its community, and in the more immediate social settings within the school such as courses and friendships-on girls' and boys' choices of science and math courses, performance in those courses, and pursuit of science, technology, engineering, math, and teaching majors in college, analyzing two related datasets: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the new Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Transcript Study (AHAA), the education component to the original Add Health. The researchers will also determine whether gendered choices and performance in science and math are influenced by the broader social context between schools -including the schools' academic and informal climate and the surrounding community, and whether the effects of this broader social context across schools differ among students according to their (a) race and ethnicity, b) social class and (c) immigrant generational status.
The Roles of Language and Education in the Civic Integration of Adolescent Immigrants during the Transition to Adulthood
Principal Investigator: Chandra L. Muller
Additional Investigators: Rebecca Callahan, Co-Investigator
Consultants: Kenneth Frank
Funded by: Russell Sage Foundation
This study aims to investigate 1) how schools facilitate the integration of immigrant youth into civic society, through exposure to curricular and extracurricular opportunities and through the structuring of informal social opportunities, and what the role of language has in this process; 2) how school contexts or communities-in particular their composition, administrative organization and policies-contribute to the civic engagement of adolescents, and what the role of language has in this process, and 3) how these academic and social experiences during high school influence language use and, in turn, civic integration in early adulthood, taking into account engagement with other institutions such as postsecondary education, work, church, and family formation.
It is expected that the interplay of adolescent and young adult language with high school experiences, and the balance of school with family and community in early adulthood, will shape how immigrants engage in civic activity and identify linguistically and socially, as young adults. These pathways may differ depending on the socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of assimilation.
