This application requests five years of support for a multi-site postdoctoral training program that focuses on the development of research competencies required to conduct collaborative, multi-disciplinary studies addressing the effect of transitions on families and mental health in diverse settings and groups. The training program will be carried out by the Consortium on Transitions, Families, and Mental Health in Diverse Populations, which through a separate proposal, is under consideration for funding. As the fourth generation of the highly successful training programs of the Family Research Consortium (FRC), the proposed program will draw upon the accomplishments of its immediate predecessor, the Consortium on Diversity, Family Process, and Child/Adolescent Mental Health (FRC III) Training Program. Though our program is modeled after its predecessors, FRC IV has a distinctive function, a reconstructed faculty, and a new set of activities. The conceptual focus of the FRC IV and its training program will be mental health and """"""""transitions"""""""" which we conceive broadly as changes in individuals or families with regard to status, condition, location, or context. Transitions are viewed as periods of both risk and opportunity for mental health, adjustment, and human development. A key feature of the new consortium is to be especially attentive to ethnic, racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and structural diversity in our examinations of the focal issues. The Family Research Consortium was initially established in order to promote intellectual exchange and collaboration among scholars across the nation on issues related to families and mental health. The proposed training programs are designed to develop research skills among appropriate postdoctoral scholars that would enable them to design and conduct research on the focal themes with individuals and families that vary on the basis of ethnicity, race, culture, socioeconomic level, and in terms of groups---structure and status.
The specific aims of the proposed training program are: 1. to promote and develop research competency in the study of transitions among diverse families, as they influence and are influenced by family processes and the mental health of family members, and 2. to advance substantive, theoretical and methodological knowledge on transitions among diverse families, as they influence and are influenced by family processes and the mental health of family members. The training will emphasize state-of-the art methods and analysis techniques appropriate for quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method investigations. ? ?
Showing the most recent 10 out of 55 publications
