The PIs of this project from the University of Minnesota are expanding the capacity for conducting data-intensive interdisciplinary research to advance knowledge and understanding of child well-being across multiple data systems including education, child welfare, health, mental health and juvenile justice. The project is integrating six additional datasets into the current Minnesota Linking information for Kids (Minn-LInK) cross-system data project. The project is building a community of researchers from diverse disciplinary communities to expand data linkage, develop infrastructure for efficient utilization of integrated data, and organize an interdisciplinary communication network. The project makes a more comprehensive set of data available to researchers, expands codebooks for new and existing data, and develops ready-to-use datasets and tools for efficient utilization. A Fellowship program to train graduate students and develop future researchers coordinates the efforts of university faculty and state agency staff.
The construction of the Minn-LInK Fellows has the potential to integrate the university into the work of the state, regional and local agencies. The collaborative training experiences for the graduate students who will be a part of the Fellows program brings together the research and disciplinary knowledge of the faculty with the agencies' experiences, understanding of the datasets, and knowledge of the policy and practical issues that are faced by the state. The collaborative community in this proposal starts from the perspective of early childhood education rather than from a K-12 or postsecondary perspective. The research infrastructure that is developed by this project expands the capacity of researchers throughout the state of Minnesota to better use the longitudinal integrated data to more fully understand the influence of student performances in STEM on multiple malleable factors in education.
