The primary goal of this Mentored Research Scientist Development application is to provide the candidate with additional training and the opportunity for the refinement of research skills so she may become a fully independent investigator. Although the candidate has a respectable publication record, her grantsmanship experience is more limited. The candidate's long-term goal is to have a program of research that focuses on variables that may mediate and/or moderate the relationship between parental alcoholism and offspring adjustment. Her immediate goals are to meet the objectives proposed in the career development plan of this application. The candidate has outlined a five-year intensive training period consisting of mentoring, advanced training in statistical modeling (particularly structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling), grantsmanship, and the ethical conduct of research. In addition to these training activities, a major focus of the career development plan will be the conduct of a short-term longitudinal study examining psychosocial variables that may moderate the relationship between parental alcoholism and adolescent adjustment. The primary goals of the proposed research study are to: 1) examine whether characteristics of the individual (e.g., self-worth, coping abilities) moderate the relationship between parental alcoholism and adjustment during adolescence, and whether the manner in which these potential moderators exert their influence changes over time; 2) determine whether aspects of the individual's context (e.g., family, school, peer contexts) play significant moderating roles in the relationship between parental alcoholism and adjustment during adolescence, and whether specific contextual influences change over time; 3) examine whether interactions occur between characteristics of the individual and his or her context which may influence the adolescent's development of psychological or substance abuse problems; 4) explore whether the proposed moderating variables exert their effects on the relationship between parental alcoholism and adolescent adjustment directly or via latent and/or sleeper effects; and 5) examine whether the effects of the proposed moderating variables on the relationship between parental alcoholism and adolescent adjustment differ depending on the gender of the adolescent and/or the gender of the parent. Five hundred and seventy six adolescents and their parents will be administered a packet of self-report questionnaires when the adolescents are in the 9th grade and a year later when they are in the 10th grade. The measures will assess parental substance use, adolescent psychological adjustment (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance abuse) and a variety of psychosocial variables that are hypothesized to moderate the relationship between parental alcoholism and adolescent adjustment (e.g., coping techniques, family functioning, school involvement). The data obtained from this study primarily will be analyzed using the advanced statistical techniques/skills (e.g., structural equation modeling) that the candidate will acquire during the training period. In addition, this data will be used as a foundation for a larger, more extensive, long-term longitudinal investigation designed to examine the underlying processes involved in the relationship between parental alcoholism and adolescent psychological adjustment.
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