What is the longitudinal study of child and adolescent development?
Although there are several different lines of research being carried out in the C.F.R., the one that your family has been involved in is a longitudinal study of normative development in children and families. We are studying the course of development from infancy through adolescence in children who were healthy at birth and who were born into intact families. To date, the general design of this study has included data collection in infancy (5 months), toddlerhood (20 months), the preschool period (48 months), childhood (10 years), and early adolescence (14 years). Follow-up data collections in late adolescence (at the time of graduation from high school) and early adulthood (age 20) are planned. Notably, this study is considered one of the most extensive longitudinal and cross-cultural data collections of child development ever conducted.
