Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2022 (ICPSR 37871)

Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)

Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The overall goal of the Baby's First Years project is to provide the first definitive understanding of the extent to which household income plays a causal role in affecting children's cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development early in life for children born into low-income families. Recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggest that experiences early in life have profound and enduring influences on the developing brain. Family economic resources shape the nature of many of these experiences, yet the extent to which they affect children's development is unknown. The Baby's First Years project is designed to fill important gaps in scientific knowledge about the role of economic resources in early development.

Study Design View help for Study Design

The Baby's First Years project is a randomized controlled trial that will estimate the causal impacts of unconditional cash gift payments on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development of infants and young children in low-income U.S. families. Mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities (New York City, NY; New Orleans, LA; Omaha, NE; and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) were recruited after giving birth at one of 12 hospitals across the four study sites. Screener and baseline interviews were administered verbally at the respondent's hospital bedside, with responses recoded by the interviewer on a laptop computer.

Mothers who agreed to participate in the study will receive monthly cash payments for the first 76 months of the child's life. Mothers were randomly assigned to high and low cash gift groups. The high cash gift group mothers (n=400) received $333 per month, while the low cash gift group mothers (n=600) received $20 per month. Quantitative data are collected at seven points: baseline after child is born and around the child's first, second, third, fourth, sixth, and eighth birthday.

At follow-ups for year 1, mothers were invited to participate in an at-home visit. At years 2 and 3 they were asked to complete a phone interview. The year 4, 6, and 8 follow-ups take place at local university settings. All consent forms and data collection instruments will be available on the study website: babysfirstyears.com.

Additional data collection modes that cannot be listed under "Mode of Data Collection" due to controlled vocabulary include:

• video (parent child interaction)
• audio (word count and conversational turns)
• biomarkers: hair (cortisol) and saliva (epigenetic aging)
• EEG (brain development)

Sample View help for Sample

Between May 2018 and June 2019, 1,003 mothers with incomes below the poverty threshold in four metropolitan areas in the United States were recruited in 12 hospitals shortly after giving birth. "Recruited" here means that they were judged to be eligible based on the information they provided in the screening interview, consented to and were administered a baseline interview, and were offered and agreed to receive a debit card with the monthly cash gift deposit. Within several days of recruitment, three mothers declined further participation in the study.

The intention was to recruit 250 mother/infant dyads in each of the four sites. Due to a number of IRB and other hospital-related recruiting challenges, the sample is distributed as follows: 121 mother-infant pairs in MN, 295 in LA, 295 in NE, and 289 in NY.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

Mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities (New York City, NY; New Orleans, LA; Omaha, NE; and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) who gave birth at one of 12 hospitals across the study sites during the baseline data collection period.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

Baseline measures include newborn birth weight; mother and biological father race, ethnicity, education level, and relationship status; maternal work history before and after pregnancy; child care assistance; a household roster with demographics for all adults and children (relationship to respondent, age, sex, contribution to household income); income and net worth; maternal mental health; neighborhood safety; social services receipt; and use of alcohol and cigarettes before and during pregnancy.

Mother-focused measures include: household economic hardship, social services receipt, labor market and education participation, maternal earnings, expenditures for child, housing and neighborhoods, family and maternal perceived stress, happiness and optimism, physiological stress, mental resources, physical and mental health, substance abuse, chaos in the home, relationships, parent-child interaction quality, epigenetic age, DNA methylation, frequency of parent-child activity, and discipline. Child-focused measures vary across waves but will include: language development, executive function and self-regulation, socio-emotional processing, IQ, brain function, health (BMI, physiological stress, sleep, etc.), epigenetic age and DNA methylation, and school achievement and behavior.

Response Rates View help for Response Rates

The construction of the sample is represented in the Consort diagram (Appendix Figure 1) in the User Guide for each year. Its complicated nature precludes a simple response rate calculation, so instead a full description is presented. A total of 13,482 mothers who had given birth in the maternity ward at one of the study recruitment hospitals were identified for assessment of study eligibility and 8,243 were assessed through a Screener interview. Some 6,839 did not meet the inclusion criteria (described below), 341 did not sign consent forms, and 12 did not start the baseline interview for other reasons. Both the Screener and Baseline interviews were administered verbally at the respondent's hospital bedside, with responses record by the interviewer on a laptop computer. Baseline interview data were obtained from 1,051 mothers. After completing this interview, mothers were offered and asked to agree to receiving cash gifts of unspecified monthly amounts "from charitable foundations that want to help support families with new babies".

Of the 1,051 mothers who completed the baseline interview, 47 mothers did not agree to receive the gift and an additional mother refused to provide any contact information for follow-up and therefore was not offered the cash gift. The remaining 1,003 accepted the cash gifts and were randomized into the high or low cash gift groups. Of the 1,003 mothers who were randomized by site, 3 mothers were excluded because they notified the interviewer within a few days after completing the baseline interview that they wanted to withdraw from the study, and had not spent any of the money on their debit cards.

The result is a sample of 1,000 mothers. The n=1,000 sample is referred to in this documentation as the target sample.

Age 1 data collection wave: Between July, 2019, and July, 2020, we attempted to contact as many of the 1,000 study participants as possible and interview them close to their children's first birthdays. We completed interviews with 931 participants. Our performance on the age-1 data collection is summarized in the age-1 CONSORT diagram in Appendix Figure 1 of the Age-1 User Guide.

Across the entire year, six mothers refused to be interviewed, 50 mothers were not found or were unavailable to be interviewed, and 3 mothers started and immediately interrupted the interview. A small number of mothers were ineligible for the Age 1 follow-up, including sample exclusions due to infant deaths (4) mother-child separations (2), and maternal incarcerations (4). Adjusting the denominator for ineligibility, our response rate for the age-1 data collection was 94%.

Age 2 data collection wave: Between July, 2020, and July, 2021, we attempted to contact as many of the 996 study participants as possible and interview them close to their children's second birthdays (4 participants were previously excluded from the sample due to children that passed away in the first year). We completed interviews with 922 participants. Our performance on the age-2 data collection is summarized in the age-2 CONSORT diagram in Appendix Figure 1 of the Age-2 User Guide.

Across the entire year, 8 mothers refused to be interviewed, 62 mothers were not found or were unavailable to be interviewed, and 1 mother started and immediately interrupted the interview. One mother did not respond due to a technical error. A small number of mothers were ineligible for the Age 2 follow-up, including new sample exclusions due to a mother death (1) and maternal incarcerations (1). Adjusting the denominator for ineligibility, our response rate for the age-2 data collection was 93%.

Age 3 data collection wave: Between July, 2021, and July, 2022, we attempted to contact as many of the 995 study participants as possible and interview them close to their children's third birthdays (5 participants were excluded from the sample due 4 children and 1 mother that passed away). We completed interviews with 922 participants. Our performance on the age-3 data collection is summarized in the age-3 CONSORT diagram in Appendix Figure 1 of the Age-3 User Guide.

Across the entire year, 10 mothers refused to be interviewed, 60 mothers were not found or were unavailable to be interviewed, and 3 mothers were deceased. Adjusting the denominator for ineligibility, our response rate for the age-3 data collection was 93%.

Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

The baseline data collection included one scale - the CES-D index for maternal depression [Cole, J. C., Rabin, A. S., Smith, T. L., and Kaufman, A. S. (2004). Development and validation of a Rasch-derived CES-D short form. Psychological assessment, 16(4), 360]. All scales used for outcomes at ages 1 through 3 are listed in Appendix Tables 1 and 2 in the User Guide. Please refer to the User Guide and P.I. Codebook, available under the "Data and Documentation" tab, for details.

Age 1 Common Scales

Squires, J., Bricker, D. D., and Twombly, E. (2009). Ages and stages questionnaires. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Briggs-Gowan, M. J., Carter, A. S., Irwin, J. R., Wachtel, K., and Cicchetti, D. V. (2004). The Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment: screening for social-emotional problems and delays in competence. Journal of pediatric psychology, 29(2), 143-155.

Yu, L., Buysse, D. J., Germain, A., Moul, D. E., Stover, A., Dodds, N. E., ... and Pilkonis, P. A. (2012). Development of short forms from the PROMIS sleep disturbance and sleep-related impairment item banks. Behavioral sleep medicine, 10(1), 6-24.

Food Insecurity: https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/8282/short2012.pdf

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., and Mermelstein, R. (1994). Perceived stress scale. Measuring stress: A guide for health and social scientists.

Global Happiness: The General Social Survey from NORC at the University of Chicago, retrieved from: http://gss.norc.org/Get-Documentation/questionnaires

Maternal Agency: Snyder, C.R., Harris, C., Anderson, J.R., Holleran, S.A., Irving, L.M., Sigmon, S.T., Yoshinobu, L., Gibb, J., Langelle, C., Harney, P. (1991). The will and the ways: development and vaildation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570-585.

Kroenke, K. and Spitzer, R.L. (2002). The PHQ-9: a new depression diagnostic and severity measure. Psychiatric annals, 32(9), 509-515.

Steer, R.A. and Beck, A.T., (1997). Beck Anxiety Inventory. In C.P. Zalaquett and R.J. Wood (Eds), Evaluating stress: A book of resources (pp. 23-40). Lanham, MD, US: Scarecrow Education

Evans, G.W., Gonnella, C., Marcynyszyn, L.A., Gentile, L, and Salpekar, N. (2005). The role of chaos in poverty and children's socioemotional adjustment. Psychological Science, 16(7), 560-565.

Maternal Global Health: Idler, E. L., and Benyamini, Y. (1997). Self-rated health and mortality: a review of twenty-seven community studies. Journal of health and social behavior, 21-37.

Additional Age 2 Common Scales:

- GAD-7: Spitzer RL, Kroenke K, Williams JBW, Löwe B. A Brief Measure for Assessing Generalized Anxiety Disorder: The GAD-7. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166(10):1092-1097. doi:10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092

- MCDI (English): Fenson, L., Pethick, S., Renda, C., Cox, J. L., Dale, P. S., and Reznick, J. S. (2000). Short-form versions of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 95 - 116.

- MCDI (Spanish): Jackson-Maldonado, Donna, Virginia A. Marchman, and Lia C. H. Fernald. 2012. "Short-Form Versions of the Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories." Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (4): 837-68.

- Child Nutrition: Los Angeles County WIC Survey. (2017). Retrievable from: http://lawicdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WIC-Parents-Quex-English-FINAL.pdf

Additional Age 3 Common Scales:

- Achenbach, T. M., and Ruffle, T. M. (2000). The Child Behavior Checklist and related forms for assessing behavioral/emotional problems and competencies. Pediatrics in review, 21(8), 265-271.

- Glascoe FP. Parents' Evaluations of Developmental Status: A Method for Detecting and Addressing Developmental and Behavioral Problems in Children. Nashville, TN: Ellsworth and Vandermeer Press, 1997.

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2020-11-03

Version History View help for Version History

Weight View help for Weight

There was no oversampling of population subgroups and assignment to cash gift group was predetermined by an algorithm embedded in the computer-assisted interview software. Thus, no weighting is necessary to obtain Intent-To-Treat estimates for births to low-income women in the twelve hospitals distributed across four sites. The timing of interviewer shifts in the 12 hospitals was based on administrative convenience rather than any attempt to obtain a formal population sample from the hospitals. The random nature of births across interviewer shifts contributes to the population diversity of the sample.