The Michigan Longitudinal Study: Video Social Interaction Data, 1990-2005 (ICPSR 38676)

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Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

This project adds a long-term multi-project collaboration to describe the interaction of behavior, social influence, brain vulnerability, and genetic risk, as they create the development of risk for, or resilience against the abuse of substances, and as they continue to have impact on health throughout the lifespan. The project's special focus is to archive the real-time observational data collected initially on VHS videotapes that recorded parent-child, marital, and family interaction during standardized social interaction tasks. The current digital video data is a small portion of the overall project database that permits analysis of microlevel social interaction with facial and emotional display characteristics and the examination of its long term predictive power from childhood to adulthood.

Study Design View help for Study Design

Eyberg Videotape Interaction (Parent-Child Play Task): Each parent-child dyad is observed in three standard ten-minute situations that vary in the degree to which parental control is required. A coin was flipped prior to each session to randomize which parent began in the playroom with the child. The first session was child-directed play (CDI), in which the dyad was instructed to let the child select from several toys. Following a knock on the one-way mirror, parent-directed play (PDI) began. Finally, during clean-up (CU), parents were instructed to ask the child to tidy up, although they could assist. Coding schemes exist for this protocol (e.g. the Belsky Coding System for Parent-Child Interaction (Belsky et al, 1991), but a number of others are readily available to assess warmth and control, affect, positivity of social behavior, etc. Because of the significant time investment and cost involved, the parent-child protocol was only carried out with the designated male target child, and separately with the sister closest in age to him. There also were age-graded considerations built in. The Eyberg protocol is set within the context of parent supervised freeplay, an activity that has increasingly less relevance as the child moves through middle childhood. Moreover, the task not only assesses interaction; it, also assesses compliance with authority, as well as parent capability in setting rules and limits, issues that are essential to learn as the child begins to negotiate in a world where others do not have the same bonds of affection that would lead them to excuse misbehavior. Given the age-graded nature of these issues, the task was only administered at assessments occurring between ages 3 and 8.

Marital Interaction Task: the task demands of the Family Interaction task require a degree of participation and joining that would be quite uncommon in preschool. For this reason, it was administered only starting at ages 6 through 8, but continued on through ages 12 through 17. This interaction protocol asks couples to engage in a marital problem-solving task that takes place privately, but in a room equipped with a one-way mirror. Couples are introduced to the task, and each partner is asked to rate common marital problems (e.g., money; children; communication; etc.) drawn from the Marital Problem Inventory (Knox, 1971). Partners individually rate their current importance and then jointly identify the problem currently causing the most intense disagreement between them. Couples were asked to discuss this problem for 10 minutes and attempt to resolve it, and were videotaped from behind the one-way mirror. The assessor worked with the couple thereafter if there was significant acrimony that needed to be worked through. Here also coding schemes exist to quantify these interactions, e.g., Floyd's (2004) Communication Skills Test, a coding system designed to assess couples' verbal and nonverbal communication and problem-solving proficiency in the context of marital problem-solving interactions.

Family Interaction Task: The family interaction task was administered at waves T2 (child 6 through 8), T3 (child 9 through 11), and T4 (child 12 through 14), and in contrast to the other 2 tasks, are carried out in the family home. All children and the parents take part. The protocol takes approximately 30 to 40 minutes and included two or three tasks, which were different at each wave. There were two regularly administered tasks during the session: One asked the family to make up a story using two of the Roberts' Apperception Test (RAT) (McArthur and Roberts, 1982) cards as a stimulus. The other asked the family to create a joint family drawing. In both of these protocols, the task demands are for interaction among family members. They show differences in power/authority in the family, social connectedness among family members or lack thereof, capacity to work together as a cohesive group or a disorganized one, etc. The task demands of the protocol require a degree of participation and joining that would be quite uncommon in preschool. For this reason, it was administered only starting at ages 6 through 8, but continued on through adolescence (once between the ages of 12 through 17).

Sample View help for Sample

This was a population based family study (n=460 families) of the emergence of substance abuse and other externalizing behaviors, that carried out its assessment protocol continuously for 25 years until it ended in 2005. Participants included both biological parents (460 Mothers; 450 fathers) and 1050 offspring (742M; 308F), at least one of whom (the target child (TC)) needed to be 3-5 years old at outset; all siblings 8 years younger or older of the target child were also enrolled. When parents separated, both continued to be followed; custodial step-parents were also enrolled in the study (31 stepmothers; 53 stepfathers), as were offspring partners in the later years of the study.

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Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

Eyberg Videotape Interaction (Parent-Child Play Task), Marital Interaction Task, and Family Interaction Task.

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2023-03-30

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