Grant will allow rural life study to continue

For the past five years, University researchers have examined how living in smaller cities, towns and rural areas influences the development of young children.

Now, with a $12.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute and the School of Education will look at how well these children make the transition to school.

The grant makes possible the continuation of the largest study to date of how child development is affected by rural life. Launched five years ago, the Family Life Project has been following families living in two geographical areas with a high rate of poverty among rural children — the African-American South and Appalachia.

Researchers have followed 1,292 children from birth in three counties in eastern North Carolina and three counties in central Pennsylvania to examine how differences in children’s development are linked to variations in temperament, family experience, community structure, economic circumstances and ethnicity.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

First-grader Martin Rayo works with teacher Kristy Kane during a reading session at Louisburg Elementary School. Although the literacy initiative is not part of the new study by the FPG Child Development Institute and the School of Education, it is aimed at a similar goal: helping children in rural areas. Through the new National Institutes of Health-funded study, researchers will examine how young children in rural areas and small towns make the transition to school.

The second phase of the project will follow these children as they enter school.

“Even though more than half of all poor children live in rural areas, most of the research about children living in poverty is based on studies of urban children. Therefore, policies designed to help children living in poverty may not best meet the needs of those living in rural areas,” said Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the study’s principal investigator and FPG fellow. “Our findings will have important implications for local and national policies and the services most needed by rural families.”

For example, geographic isolation is a condition unique to rural living, said Vernon-Feagans, who is also William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood, Intervention and Literacy and professor of psychology.

The first phase of the Family Life Project found that isolation was related to family dynamics. Mothers had less instability with a partner but worked more hours per week, and many families had to travel long distances to work and child care. This often led to poorer child outcomes, although positive parenting helped to offset the negative effects.

As the project moves forward, researchers will assess how children living in rural poor communities adjust to school.

Researchers will examine if the temperament of infants and toddlers predicts early school success or failure. Temperament was assessed in the first three years of each child’s life with home observations and physiological measures of saliva cortisol by measuring stress hormones in the children’s saliva and heart rate.

Researchers also will examine for the first time in rural, low-income communities how academic achievement is affected by language and cognitive skills and experiences before formal schooling, the nature and quality of the classroom instruction in the early grades, parenting experiences and outside school activities.

“This second phase of the Family Life Project will be important in understanding how the early experiences of young children in rural communities predict children’s academic and behavioral success in school,” Vernon-Feagans said.

 The Family Life Project began in 2002 with a $16.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. This second grant is for five years.

For more information about the Family Life Project, refer to www.fpg.unc.edu/~flp.