Children of Unemployed Parents Study: CUPS

This collaborative research project is the next step in a coordinated program of research on the prevention of emotional and behavioral disorders in children and families experiencing job loss.

Pursued by investigators at the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University and the Center for Family Research at the George Washington University, the project brings together unique scientific resources from each research team. These teams, strengthened also by the direct involvement of investigators from the University of Michigan Prevent Research Center and the Johns Hopkins University Prevention Research Center, have developed this project to test a transactional theory of risk and protective process concerning the links between parental job loss, subsequent stressful events and difficulties, parent-child interaction, patterns of child coping, and child trajectories of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, school competence, and competence in peer relations. This theoretical model is designed to help us understand which child are most at risk as a result of parental job loss, and to identify specific child and family adaptation mechanisms that increase or decrease risk for the development of behavioral and emotional problems. In this study we are interviewing children aged 9-14 and their parents from 200 families living in the greater urban/suburban Baltimore region. We identified these families through state unemployment agencies, and are currently interviewing mothers, fathers, and one index child in the home within one to four months after job loss. We are collecting observational data on parent-child interactions around coping issues, and are using recently develop methods for assessing challenges and stressors. Families provide data on child symptoms and competence every six months over the course of 18 months, and are being interviewed about stressful events and difficulties one year after their initial enrollment. This multi-wave dataset will be analyzed using time-sensitive methods such as latent growth curve modeling, to test a series of hypotheses concerning risk and child adaptation in the face of parental job loss.

ASU Investigators:
Tim S. Ayers & Irwin N. Sandler, Co-Principal Investigators, Seik-Toon Khoo, Nancy Eisenberg & Paul Miller
George Washington University Investigators:
George Howe, Principal Investigator, Karen Weihs & Cindy Rohrbeck
Johns Hopkins University Investigator: Nicholas Iaalongo