Within families: family-wide and child-specific influences on childrens socio-emotional development Jennifer Jenkins, Jon Rasbash, Tom OConnor

Behavioral genetic findings of siblings being so different from one another once genetic effects were controlled

What is the effect of the family environment? Focus on the similar and different experiences of siblings in families

Themes Do family-wide or child-specific aspects of the environment predict change in child behavior? How similar are childrens experiences in families? Does this vary as a function of stresses in the environment? What are childrens own contributions to the stressful environments that they experience?

Datasets NLSCY, ABSS, NEAD All involve the inclusion of multiple children per family: between 2-4 depending on dataset Some involve multi-informant data Some results involve examining change in the response variable: longitudinal design All use multilevel modeling for the analysis Jenkins, Rasbash, OConnor (2003) DP Jenkins, Simpson, Dunn, Rasbash, OConnor (2005) CD Jenkins, Dunn, OConnor, Rasbash, Behnke, JFP. In press Rasbash, Jenkins, OConnor, In preparation

Outcome Variable Between Family Comparisons Family A Family B 12 Family Level Child Level Majority of environmental studies of family influences family and child-specific processes are confounded

Environmental studies using sibling design: unconfounds family and child

Measures at the family and child-specific levels

Do family-wide or child-specific aspects of the environment predict change in child behavior? Illustrate with results from sibling study

Are there within family differences on sibling dyad negativity? ICC =.52

Shared effects: Av maternal negativity predicts an increase in sibling negativity over 2 years Family average is a stronger predictor of sibling negativity than dyad-specific negativity

Mean of sibling negativity as a function of gender of sibling dyad Girl dyads differ significantly from mixed dyads * *

Thus there are some systematic reasons that some dyads get on better than others And shared experiences are important

To what extent do siblings live in shared environments?

Shared family environments? Exposure to parental conflict Family Blue Family YellowFamily Pink Families differ from one another on how much parental conflict children experience

Shared family environments? Children within families differ from one another on how much parental conflict they experience Exposure to parental conflict Family BlueFamily Yellow Family Pink

Sibling similarity on experiences surrounding parental conflict ICC

To what extent do siblings live in shared environments? Does this vary as a function of environmental stress? Modeling differential experience in families

Differential parental positivity as a function of SES, marital problems and family size household ses differential positive parenting family size = 2, no marital problems family size = 2, marital problems family size > 2, marital problems family size > 2, no marital problems

Differential parental hostility as a function of single parenthood and marital dissatisfaction. Intact/no marital problem Marital problemSingle parent differential negativity

Limitations of this method Measurement problems. Although in some of the studies the IV and DV are based on different informants, the family clustering information is based on single informant. Degree of family clustering that we see may be related to same person reporting on measures for different siblings

Another method for examining similar and differential experiences in families as well as consistency of behavior when interacting with different members of the family

Social relations model Every person in a family interacts with every other person Rate each persons expression of negativity and positivity towards every other family member Data are observational

Within family structure Family 1… Relationship: c1 c2 c1 m c1 f c2 c1 c2 m c2 f m c1 m c2 m f f c1 f c2 f m Actor: c1 c2 m f Partner: c1 c2 m f Dyad d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 We start with 12 relationship scores in each family. These can be classified : partner dyad and familyactor

Interpretation of variance components Family:the extent to which families differ from one another Actor: the extent to which individuals act similarly across relationships. Partner: the extent to which individuals elicit the same behaviors from others. Dyad: The extent to which emotion expression is specific to the dyad and based on reciprocity.

Consistency of individual emotional expression across dyads: a function of the dyad or the individual?

% of variance explained by actor, partner and dyad for positivity and negativity: People are very consistent in their positivity across relationships irrespective of what their interactional partner is doing. Not so of negativity. The partner effect is surprisingly small

Negativity is less internal to the person and more sparked off by behavior of interactional partner than positivity High reciprocity for negativity

Extent to which families are different from one another

% of variance at the family level

Do characteristics of individuals affect the dyads in which they interact or do they exert their influence across the whole family? Example depression

An individuals depression score may explain family level variance or only variance in dyads in which the individual is a member.

Example of data coding to examine effects on families or dyads

Family (spillover) and dyad effects of depression on NEGATIVITY Depression scoreSignificance Child 1 at family level* Child 2 at family level* Mother at family levelns Father at family level* Child 1 at dyad levelns Child 2 at dyad levelns Mother at dyad level* Father at dyad levelns

Family (spillover) and dyad effects of depression on POSITIVITY Depression scoreSignificance C1 at family levelns C2 at family levelns Mother at family levelns Father at family level* C1 at dyad levelns C2 at dyad levelns Mother at dyad levelns Father at dyad levelns

Advantages of multilevel methods for family data Differentiating between family-wide and child-specific processes in families Highly stressful environments increase the variation in the within family environment Social relations model allows us to look at consistency of individuals behavior in families, how different families are from one another and why

Disadvantages of multilevel approach to families For psychologists the statistics get very complicated Cross discipline collaboration is essential!!!