This research proposal outlines the building of a research archive or ongoing data base on the corpus of data now available for the sample of the Early Training Project at Peabody. The participants reach 26 in 1984; they took part in a pre-school educational intervention study, one showing lasting effects. The data may be viewed as an important national resource for researchers concerned with policy issues in that they have direct relevance to social policy directed toward preventing and ameliorating socio-cultural retardation. The sample also has near-unique value in affording researchers a sharp and needed contrast to the samples of the well-known longitudinal studies. Participants are black, from small towns in the Southeast, and originally of very low-income status. Knowledge of black development, particularly with a life-span orientation, is meager. The objectives of the proposed study are: 1. To locate and obtain permission where possible from the 88 known living participants (and parents in case of interviews) for placement of their records in the archive. 2. To safeguard, and share with other researchers the raw data through microfiching the records, once they are organized and prepared for photographing. This step is planned to be consonant with later computer storage and retrieval. 3. To provide computer storage for all data easily reducible to numerical scores, e.g., such non-judgmental data as test scores and school records. 4. To prepare users' manuals for material stored by computer, and to revise coding manuals for interview records and ratings. The principal investigator proposed is the researcher who has directed the study from its inception; the research associate has been closely involved in the study since 1975.
