Research Projects

These studies focus on families at risk and efforts to address their problems as well as the changing structure of families and family life.  All of these projects stress the critical role of context and settings while maintaining a focus on the way that ethnicity and culture frame our conceptualizations of institutions and the behaviors and attitudes of individuals. 

Project List:

1. Action for Autism India Parent Child Training Program (PCTP) Evaluation

2. La Vida: The Daily Lives of Mexican-American Families in Los Angeles

3. Qualitative Follow-Up of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD

4. The New Hope Study:  Working Poor Families and Children
5. Project CHILD: Families with Children with Disabilities
6. The Head Start Early Literacy Program
7. Mixed Method and Theory
8. The Local Knowledge/ Evidence Farming Study
9. The Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Research Laboratory Collaborations

  • 1. Action for autism india Parent Child Training Programme (PCTP) evaluation
    • Co-PIs: Tom Weisner and Tamara Daley (Westat)
    • Funding: Foundation for Psychocultural Research, Robert Lemelson, President, as part of the Culture, Brain and Development Mental Health program at UCLA. 
    • Autism is only beginning to appear as a diagnosis in India, and family supports and treatments are being developed as a blend of those from the US and Europe, and Indian adaptations.  We have assembled a team focused on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), with a field site in New Delhi, India, led by Dr. Tamara Daley, with two Delhi-based collaborators, one an academic researcher (Nidhi Singhal) and the other an institution/NGO working in the autism field (Action for Autism).  We have launched an assessment of the family training and support program there, the AFA Parent Child Training Programme (PCTP).  The goal of UCLA evaluation of the AFA Parent Child Training Programme is to examine the extent to which the intended outcomes across the areas of focused are achieved among all participants in the program and how this program operates with the Indian families and children who participate.  
  • 2. la vida: the daily lives of mexican-american families in la
    • PI: Fuligni; Co-PIs: Tom Weisner, Nancy Gonzales (Arizona State University)
    • Funding: NICHD.  July 2009 – June 2011.
    •  Families with Latino backgrounds now represent the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, and adolescents within these families face substantial challenges to their psychological and behavioral adjustment.  Emerging evidence indicates that traditional family values and practices may play a critical role in shaping Latino adolescents’ risk for a number of problematic outcomes, including externalizing behavior problems, substance use, symptoms for depression and anxiety and school disengagement and dropout.  Family obligation, responsibility, cooperation and assistance have been identified as key elements of family relationships among families with Mexican backgrounds, the single largest Latino ethnic group in the US.  Family obligation and assistance also have been shown to be significant predictors of adolescents’ positive emotional, behavioral, and academic adjustment.  But it is still unclear which facets of family obligation and assistance are sources of strength and which are challenges for the adolescents’ adjustment.  Without this information, it is difficult to develop meaningful programs and policies that focus on this growing population of adolescents.  The La Vida study suggests that family membership functions as a core social identity for adolescents from Mexican backgrounds and mediates adolescent routines and adjustment.  The proposed study will employ mixed methods, including quantitative interviews, daily diary checklists, and qualitative interviews.  The study will take place in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, a primary location of families with Mexican backgrounds in the United States. Adolescents recruited from the 9th and 10th grades from two LA area high schools, and both parents will complete a personal interview, and adolescent and one parent will have completed a fourteen day diary checklist for two consecutive years.   In addition, a 10% randomly sampled subset of families will annually participate in the Ecocultural Family Interview, which is an established qualitative interview designed to provide a more in-depth view of the dynamics of the socialization, daily manifestation, and developmental implications of family obligation and assistance.  The EFI also uses digitial photos taken by the teens.  The EFI study is directed by Weisner.
  • 3. Qualitative Follow-Up of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD
    • Co-PI: Weisner, PI: Karen Wells (Duke University); add’l sites: UC-Irvine, Montreal, and UC-Berkeley
    • This study examines the association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood and patterns of substance use, abuse, and dependence (as well as desistance) in later life.  This proposal utilizes a unique mixed-method approach to delineate precisely such moderators and mediators within the MTA sample, which provides a perfect opportunity to understand these processes at a life period of major risk for abuse (21-24 years).  The Eco-cultural Family Interviews (EFI) are used.  The EFI is a focused interview given to parent and youth, about individuals’ and families’ daily lives including open-ended questions about substance abuse, life turning points, and experiences with ADHD.  These semi-structured, qualitative interviews add the experiences, voices, stories, and life narratives to the copious quantitative data already collected on the MTA sample.  The study aim is to identify (a) the process of transition to regular substance use, (b) the mechanisms by which high-risk young adults with ADHD may avoid substance abuse, and (c) the relationship between stimulant treatment and substance use.  We will integrate our coded interview data with the 12-year follow up data set on drug use and abuse, demographics, psychiatric functioning, and stimulant use with the qualitative data to be collected in order to discover putative risk and protective factors as well as moderating and mediating processes.  During the 2-year supplement contract period, participants in the MTA with a history of ADHD (Combined Type) diagnosed at age 7-9 years (n=48 per site), plus local normative comparison subjects-LNCG (n=26 per site), will be recruited at each of three MTA sites (Duke, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine), for a total of 144 MTA and 78 LNCG participating families.  Young adults and their caregivers will be interviewed separately, with each interview taking about 1½ – 2 hours. Participants will be selected based upon history of substance use and balanced to adequately reflect each of the original MTA treatment groups.  
  • 4. the new hope study: working poor families and children
    • Co-PI: Weisner, PI: Aletha Huston (University of Texas); add’l Co-PI’s: Greg Duncan (Northwestern University), Robert Granger (William T. Grant Foundation)
    • Funding: NIH/NICHD; William T. Grant Foundation; MacArthur Foundation, 1998 – 2005
    • New Hope (NH), a community-based experimental intervention intended to provide meaningful supports for working poor parents and children.  The intervention was based on this premise:  if parents work, even at low-wage jobs, families should not be poor and children should not be at further risk, and hopefully doing better. New Hope was a social contract support program: in return for full-time work, the program participants were eligible for a quite generous package of assistance.  New Hope was a work-based program in Wisconsin, offering rather substantial assistance (vouchers for child care, health care, income supplements and jobs if parents did not have work) if parents worked 30+ hours a week. The impact of the NH intervention was assessed using a random-assignment experimental longitudinal design.  New Hope did increase overall earnings and employment hours by 10 – 15% compared to controls.  Adults, men and women, not working at baseline, increased earnings and work hours compared to control families.  NH families used formal childcare significantly more often (41% vs. 29% in controls), and boys are doing somewhat better in school. Although there were impacts, the pathways through which the program features affected families varied.  An extensive ethnographic study of 44 families, in both program and control groups, was an integral part of this project and the evidence from those families provided insights into the processes, mechanisms, and experiences of families in the study.  Two books have resulted from this work.  One is co-authored with Greg Duncan and Aletha Huston:  Higher Ground: New Hope for working families and their children.  The other is an edited book with Hiro Yoshikawa and Edward Lowe:  Making It Work:  Low wage employment, family life, and child development.
  • 5. Project CHILD: families with children with disabilities
    • PI: Weisner, Co-PI’s Ronald Gallimore, Barbara Keogh, Lucinda Bernheimer, Kazuo Nihira
    • Funding: NIH/NICHD, 1984 – 2005
    • Project Child was a collaborative longitudinal study of teens with disabilities at clear risk for developmental, school, or community troubles.  102 families with children with disabilities were recruited  when their children were ages 3-4 and followed for 17 years.  Data include child assessments, family questionnaires, and qualitative and ethnographic studies of families and children. This is the first such study to include data from the children when they reached 16 years of age to understand their experiences using interviews with them.  These data are linked to longitudinal developmental assessments, family adaptations, and parent reports.  Family adaptation is associated primarily with the ways the child impacts the family daily routine of life, rather than the cognitive ability of the child. More effective adaptation by families to delay is not primarily accounted for by parental socioeconomic status, nor by the assessed cognitive abilities of children, but rather is related to the values and goals of parents, to ecocultural opportunities and constraints, and the ability of parents to organize a meaningful, sustainable routine of everyday life that meets their goals.   Teens vary widely in how they think about their own disabilities, and most do have an at least partial explanatory model accounting for their disability.  Friendship patterns of teens are evaluated more positively by teens themselves than by parents or researchers, and teens with disabilities have their own definitions of friendship that focus largely on continuity of contact and familiarity.  School experiences show a similar pattern:  teens weigh school activities and acquaintances more positively than others weigh them on behalf of the teens.  Longitudinal assessments of teen outcomes (ages 3 – 17) show that cognitive assessments over time do not predict adolescent or parent subjective well being, but socioemotional and daily routine measures do.  Child assessments are stronger predictors of subsequent family accommodations than family accommodations are as predictors of later individual child measures.
  • 6. The head start early literacy study
    • Co-PI: Weisner; PI:  JoAnn Farver (University of Southern California); add’l Co-PI:  Chris Lonigan (Florida State University)
    • Funding: NSF, 2002-2007
    • Children and parents in Head Start are from working poor families and face many problems when making the transitions from Head Start to kindergarten and first grade.  Weisner participates in an NSF-funded study of a new curriculum and family support program for Head Start centers and families intended to enhance early literacy experiences for children and parents.  We have analyzed interviews and home visits to parents done before and after the curriculum and family visits are done.  What did parents believe and what did they practice with regard to home literacy?  What was their experience of this intervention and how did it affect their practices and beliefs, if it did?  Data from this experimental intervention, with both a curriculum and family arm, are currently being cleaned and analyzed.
  • 7. mixed method and theory
    • PI or Co-PI:  Weisner
    • Funding:  MacArthur Foundation; William T. Grant Foundation; Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC); NICHD (Fieldwork Core); 2003 – 2010
    • Weisner edited Discovering successful pathways in children’s development: New  methods in the study of childhood and family life which argues for the value of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods in human development for both basic research and for applied and policy work.  He has collaborated on funded mixed methods studies with MDRC and others, including directing a core facility in the MR Center here at UCLA.  He continues to work in the general field of culture and human development and has written papers on analyzing settings, on theory, and on methods in these fields.   Also, see: Yoshikawa, H., Weisner, T. S., Kalil, A., & Way, N.  (2008).  Mixing qualitative and quantitative research in developmental science:  Uses and methodological choices. Developmental Psychology, 44(2): 344-354.
  • 8.  The local knowledge/evidence farming study
    • Co-PI: Weisner, PI’s:  Naihua Duan & Richard Kravitz
    • Funding: Pfizer, 2006 – 2008
    • With Naihua Duan, Richard Kravitz, and Saskia Subramanian, Weisner has collaborated on a study of how local knowledge might be brought together, and made readily available to practitioners for use in their clinical  practices.   This study launched in October 2006, and used use focus groups, in-depth qualitative informational conversations, and ethnography.  Analysis and publications are in progress.
  • 9. The Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Research Laboratory Collaborations
    • Weisner, Director; Eli Lieber, Co-Director
    • Funding:  NICHD core facility (Mental Retardation Research Center, UCLA)
    • Weisner and Dr. Eli Lieber provide advice and services related to the collection, maintenance, and analysis of qualitative and mixed methods data.  Currently, the Lab actively works with nearly every project being undertaken in the Center for Culture & Health, including the following: methods and data analysis collaboration for Browner’s studies of clinical research; the use of EthnoNotes for the Edgerton/Tucker study of mid-life adults with (with Dr. Cathy Matheson); interview content for the recent Latino Schooling study led by Professor Ron Gallimore; and database support and analysis for Cameron Hay’s study of UCLA clinic encounters.  All of Weisner’s studies employ the EthnoNotes system for data analysis (e.g., New Hope, Early Literacy, and the Child study of disabled children).The fieldwork lab is working in the area of methods development and implementation of EthnoNotes, a web-based database system for the preparation, storage, coding, analysis and output of qualitative and quantitative data.  This work includes making the EthnoNotes system widely available and accessible at low cost, consulting on the use of the system for a wide range of social science research studies, and disseminating information on its use.  The Lab currently is funded by NICHD as a core facility within the MRRC.
  • Collaborations
    • Weisner has ongoing collaborations across the Semel Institute with the Center for Health Services (Prof. Ken Wells, Director), and the Center for Community Health (Prof. Mary Jane Rotheram), and the The Center for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities  (Fieldwork lab core facility). Weisner is affiliated with the Culture, Brain, and Development program (CBD) housed in Anthropology and  Psychology at UCLA (Clark Barrett, Director).
    • External to UCLA, Weisner is a member of the research advisory board of Public/Private Ventures, a policy research organization based in Philadelphia.  He also has participated as a member of the advisory group for several NIH-funded grants over the  past five years, such as studies of family adaptation to mental  health concerns in youth, effects  on  children and  parents  of moves out  of  poverty neighborhoods, immigrant cultural communities’ children in middle  schools in New York City, and a home visiting program in Milwaukee, WI.   He is on the advisory board of the NIFBE program through Osnabrueck University, Germany (Prof. Heidi Keller, Director).
    • He prepared a course on integrated qualitative and quantitative methods for the CDC, and presented this course there.  He is a Senior Program Advisor to the William T. Grant Foundation, and in that capacity works on grant reviews, program planning and Foundation initiatives, particularly in the areas of research on social settings and context, culture, and integrated mixed methods research.  He is past President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, and as part of that role, is involved in the activities of the American Anthropological Association.   He is an elected member of the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).  He is on the Board of ChildFund, International.