It is essential to societies that their children become competent adults. To facilitate the development of competence, it is important to understand the processes that drive successful development and transitions to adult life. This study has the goal of contributing to the fundamental knowledge needed for building theory, designing policies, and guiding programs focused on promoting successful pathways to competence, particularly for individuals who grow up with adversity. Understanding resilience, how children overcome risks and negative life experience to become competent, is particularly important in our time because many American children are growing up in hazardous situations. This project is a 20-year follow-up of a school sample of 205 urban children and their families who joined `Project Competence` in 1978 and 1979 when they were in elementary school. They were followed up 7 and 10 years later. Extensive data are available on the development and life histories of these children through adolescence. In this new follow-up, the cohort will be contacted again to assess their adult success in multiple domains of competence from multiple informants, including the young adults themselves, parents, peers, and employers. These data will make it possible to identify the predictors of adult success in life for children and adolescents who have faced great hardship and to test hypotheses that adult competence in work, family and community roles has roots earlier in development and that children with good social capital will weather adversity, become competent adults and providers of social capital for society and the next generation. This study will enhance our understanding of the risk and protective factors that jeopardize and promote the development of social competence from childhood to adulthood. Results could inform efforts to foster resilience in children and youth at risk due to psychosocial disadvantage or adversity.
