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Conclusions
Proceedings from the ACF-sponsored workshop made it clear that the NLSY97 data can greatly inform key research and policy questions in the area of marriage strengthening and child and family well-being. Several additions or changes could further enhance the utility of the data for these purposes. For example, the data could answer questions directly related to the design of healthy marriage interventions such as:
- What are major barriers to forming and maintaining healthy marriage in society?
- What relationship skills and qualities appear most critical for healthy marriage?
- What are the differences among couples (e.g., by income or race/ethnicity) in types and qualities of relationships and family structures?
- Which couples are at greatest risk and might benefit most from healthy marriage interventions?
- What sources of challenge and resilience among couples appear most relevant for healthy marriage and child well-being?
Similarly, the data could answer important questions that reach across marriage and other domains of the family context and reflect their intersections. For example:
- What can be learned about how some families thrive when facing adverse conditions? What contributes to movement of disadvantaged families up the economic income scale? What role do public programs and social structures play?
- How can we better understand today’s complex family structures and identify ways to help ensure that all parents (biological and step, resident and non-resident) are appropriately engaged in the child’s wellbeing?
- How can we better understand the relationships between decisions regarding family formation and child bearing and other critical decisions such as those regarding employment opportunities or living arrangements/housing and the implications for each domain?
- What points over a child’s life appear to offer the greatest opportunities for families and society to make a difference in their well-being, and at what points are they most vulnerable?
Many of these changes could be accomplished with relatively modest resources in 12 months or less, and would be fairly straightforward to implement either through BLS or independently. These smaller scale enhancements might provide the most likely targets of opportunity in the short run.
The panel suggested, however, that some attention to medium and larger scale opportunities would also be beneficial. Due to the lengthy lead time needed to plan for new content areas or cohorts, planning and design work is needed long before the new data would actually be available. The current discussion around a 2010 NLSY cohort is a clear example of the need for forward planning. Because some of these efforts are costly, they may require more collaboration and leveraging of resources (both funding and expertise) across organizations. Individuals and organizations that could benefit from the content of these more complex changes may wish to build a dialogue around their possible implementation.
Better understanding of how families are doing, what challenges they face, and what helps them thrive is critical within social science research. As a longitudinal data set of respondents just now reaching their early 20s, the NLSY97 is well positioned to illustrate how families are formed and how they grow and function, as well as how this process interacts with elements of work, community, education, faith, and public supports. As many of the young adult respondents in the NLSY97 have already entered parenthood, this is a particularly strategic time to stimulate interest in these data and consider ways to improve their utility for marriage and family researchers.
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