PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT:
Parental divorce is experienced by about 1 million children per year in the US and it is estimated that 40% of
children in the US will experience this transition in family structure. Parental divorce confers risk for problems in
multiple domains of functioning across the lifespan. Compelling evidence demonstrates that this family
transition confers risk for numerous problems in childhood, adolescence and adulthood that have significant
individual and societal costs, including physical health problems, mental health problems, problematic
substance use, cigarette smoking, and risky sexual activity. It also impairs competencies such as academic
performance, peer competence and self-esteem. This proposal advances NICHD's scientific vision to
“understand how specific… behavioral, and social factors interact over time to influence health and disease”
and to identify individual- and family-level factors that are most likely to promote positive outcomes, such as
resiliency. The overall goal of this project is to examine the long-term effects of the New Beginnings Program
(NBP), a parenting-after-divorce prevention program that was provided when the offspring were between 9 and
12 years old. The NBP has shown positive effects on multiple problem outcomes and competencies in
childhood, adolescence and emerging adulthood. This application proposes a 26-year follow-up of 240 adult
offspring (35-38 years old) of mothers who participated in a randomized, controlled trial (RCT) of the program.
The specific aims of the project are as follows: 1) examine whether the NBP's effects on physical health,
mental health, and substance use problems and competence outcomes endure into adulthood, 2) test the
pathways by which the program has long-term effects in adulthood, 3) assess whether the NBP leads to
benefits in the offspring (G3) of adults (G2) whose families participated in the NBP 26 years earlier and 4)
conduct a comprehensive assessment of the NBP's fiscal impact. This project builds on data from five multi-
agent, multi-method assessments with excellent retention (90%-98% of randomly assigned families). In the 6-
year and 15-year follow-up assessments, program effects were found on multiple domains of functioning,
including physical health and mental health outcomes and competencies. Multi-method, multi-agent
assessment that includes reports from the adult offspring, their romantic partners, their children between 3 and
18 years old and the children's teacher; behavioral observation of parent-child interactions; and physiological
measures of health outcomes will be conducted. Data analytic strategies, including logistic regression, analysis
of covariance and survival analysis, will be used to test program effects on the functioning of the adults and
their children. Multiple-path mediation models will be conducted to identify the pathways that account for the
program effects.