Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Fall 2005
Classroom: Callier North 1.516 and MP2.220
Instructor: Margaret Tresch Owen
Office: GR 4.826
Office Hours: Thursdays 10:00 – 11:30am and by appointment
Email: mowen@utdallas.edu
Phone: 972-883-6876
Course Description: In this course you will learn to how to utilize public data sets to address
research questions in psychological science. You will learn about various extant public data sets
pertinent to developmental psychology and how they can be utilized to address various research
questions. Most of the course will focus on learning how to use longitudinal data from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth
Development. SECCYD data from 1,364 families have been collected since their infants’ birth in
1991. The study covers demographic, family, maternal, paternal, and child care provider, teacher,
school and classroom characteristics; child social and emotional outcomes; language development;
cognitive skills; school readiness; growth and health measures; school achievement; and much more.
It includes data collected by observation, testing, face-to-face and phone interviews, and
questionnaires. The data sets of the SECCYD have recently become available for public use. There is
extensive documentation available. This course is designed to introduce the SECCYD study and its
available data bases (currently from birth through the fifth grade of school) so that you can
independently use the NICHD SECCYD data bases for original scholarship and publications.
Over the semester you will produce (1) a proposal for an original study focused on an aspect of child
development through secondary data analyses of the SECCYD data, (2) IRB approval for conducting
your proposed study, (3) data analyses of your study questions using the SECCYD data, and (4) a draft
of a research paper prepared for submission to a professional journal.
Course Requirements:
The class will meet 6 times in the computer lab in MP2.220: 9/12, 9/26, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, and
11/14. You will receive CD-ROMs containing the public data sets of the NICHD Study of Early Child
Care and Youth Development and extensive data documentation.
Course grades will be given based on (1) class participation (proposal presentation, completion of
class data set formation and analysis exercises, contributions to and discussion of proposal
presentations)—25%, (2) IRB application—10%, and (3) research paper—65%, which will be
submitted in stages with feedback provided as needed.
Recommended references:
Cody, R.P., & Smith, J.K. (2006). Applied statistics and the SAS programming language. Fifth
edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Aiken, L.S. & West, S.G. (1991). Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions.
Newbury Park, NJ: Sage.
If the assigned articles aren’t available electronically through the UTD library, I will post them on
Blackboard.
Class Schedule:
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2001). Nonmaternal care and family factors in
early development: An overvie w of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Journal of
Applied Developmental Psychology, 22, 457-492.
Burchinal, M., & Nelson, L. (2000). Family selection and child care experiences:
Implications for studies of child outcomes. Early Childhood Research
Quarterly, 15, 385-411.
Hamre, B. & Pianta, R. (in press). Can instructional and emotional support in the first grade
classroom make a difference for children at risk of school failure? Child Development
.[posted on Blackboard]
NICHD ECCRN. (1999). Chronicity of maternal depressive symptoms, maternal sensitivity,
and child functioning at 36 months. Developmental Psycholo gy, 35, 1297-1310.
NICHD ECCRN (2005). Duration and developmental timing of poverty and children’s
cognitive and social development from birth through third grade. Child Development,
76, 795-810.
Sept. 26* Due: 2-5 pp. proposal of study question(s) and IRB application
McCartney, K. & Rosenthal, R. (2000). Effect size, practical importance, and social policy for
children. Child Development, 71, 173-180.
Kline, R.B. (2004). Parametric effect size indexes. Beyond significance testing. (pp. 95-143).
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Raudenbush, S.W. (2001).Comparing personal trajectories and drawing causal inferences from
longitudinal data. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 501-525.
Aiken, L.S. & West, S.G. (1991). Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions.
Newbury Park, NJ: Sage.
Behrens, J.T., & Yu, C.H. The visualization of multi-way interactions and higher-order terms
in multiple regression. Paper presented at 1994 meetings of the Psychometric Society.
http://www.creative-wisdom.com/pub/psychometric/psychometric.html
Brooks-Gunn, J., Han, W., & Waldfogel, J. (2002). Maternal employment and child cognitive
outcomes in the first three years of life: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Child
Development, 73, 1052-1072.
Follow-up analyses