“The
Future of Longitudinal Studies:
What we know; What we don’t know; What we need to
know”
The
Reciprocal Relation Between Studies Of Health/Normality And Illness/Psychopathology
Chaired by Stephen Hinshaw, University of California, Berkeley
Friday, March 21, 2003
Rand Conger
"The Reciprocal Relation Between Studies of Health and Illness"
University of California, Davis
Dr. Rand Conger studies “health” in the broadest sense,
including both physical and psychological dimensions of well-being.
His research emphasizes personal and social factors that promote
and maintain optimal functioning. This research studied a sample
of over 400 seventh graders, their parents, and at least one of
their siblings (the sample was recruited from a depressed area of
rural Iowa). One key question was how economic circumstances affected
the children and the family system. This cohort continues to be
followed after 15 years; the seventh graders are now 27 years old,
and many have their own children. Therefore, it has been possible
to study how the health of one’s family of origin influences
the second and third generations.
Findings illustrated links between health variables at the individual
level and emotional and behavioral outcomes. For example, individuals
high in mastery (e.g., the sense of having control over one’s
environment) exhibited fewer depressive symptoms. Parents high in
mastery were able to reduce the stress in their lives, and specifically
were able to reduce actual economic pressures that were contributing
to depressive symptoms. Another set of findings demonstrated how
relationship quality can moderate the impact of economic pressures
on emotional functioning: for marriages providing low amounts of
social support, husbands and wives both showed an increase in emotional
distress as economic pressures increased; for marriages providing
high amounts of support, on the other hand, there was no relation
between husbands’ and wives’ emotional distress and
economic pressure. As another example, for couples with ineffective
problem solving skills, more marital conflict was related to more
general marital distress; for couples with effective problem solving
skills, level of marital conflict was not strongly related to levels
of general marital distress. One implication of these findings is
that there are multiple areas where interventions can be targeted;
a simple intervention focusing on problem solving skills, for example,
can have important immediate and longer-term effects on health and
relationship outcomes.
Finally, there was evidence that “positive parenting”
practices (e.g., communication, listening, being assertive with
one’s child in a positive way) may be transmitted from one
generation to the next. The demonstration of positive parenting
by first generation parents predicted positive parenting in the
second generation (the cohort of 7th graders), and predicted diminished
anger and aggression (e.g., hostile, antisocial, avoidant behavior)
in the third generation (the children of the original cohort of
7th graders).
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