Harding Jessica F
New York University.
Dev Psychol. 2015 May;51(5):583-99. doi: 10.1037/a0038920. Epub 2015 Apr 6.
Although the strong link between maternal education and children's outcomes is one of the most well-established findings in developmental psychology (Reardon, 2011; Sirin, 2005), less is known about how young, low-income children are influenced by their mothers completing additional education. In this research, longitudinal data from the Head Start Impact Study were used to explore the associations between increases in maternal education and Head Start eligible children's cognitive skills and behavioral problems in 1st grade. Propensity score weighting was used to identify a balanced comparison group of 1,362 children whose mothers did not increase their education between baseline (when children were aged 3 or 4) and children's kindergarten year, who are similar on numerous covariates to the 262 children whose mothers did increase their education. Propensity-score weighted regression analyses indicated that increases in maternal education were positively associated with children's standardized cognitive scores, but also with higher teacher-reported externalizing behavioral problems in 1st grade. The increases in externalizing behavioral problems were larger for children whose mothers had less than a college degree at baseline.
尽管母亲受教育程度与孩子成长结果之间的紧密联系是发展心理学中最确凿的研究发现之一（里尔登，2011年；西林，2005年），但对于低收入幼儿如何受到母亲接受额外教育的影响，我们了解得较少。在本研究中，“启智计划影响研究”的纵向数据被用于探究母亲受教育程度的提高与符合“启智计划”条件的儿童一年级时的认知技能和行为问题之间的关联。倾向得分加权法被用于确定一个由1362名儿童组成的平衡对照组，这些儿童的母亲在基线期（孩子3岁或4岁时）到孩子上幼儿园期间没有提高受教育程度，他们在众多协变量上与262名母亲提高了受教育程度的儿童相似。倾向得分加权回归分析表明，母亲受教育程度的提高与孩子的标准化认知分数呈正相关，但也与一年级教师报告的更多外化行为问题相关。对于基线期母亲学历低于大学程度的孩子，外化行为问题的增加幅度更大。
