Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Oakland Growth Study and the Berkeley Guidance Study are two pioneering long-term studies that explored child development. Both studies were analyzed by Glen Elder . He was interested in the effects of poverty on child development. He concluded that poverty can have both negative and positive consequences. The positive consequences often predominate, especially in the middle class.

The studies in detail

  • The Oakland Growth Study was led by Harold Jones and Herbert Stolz. 167 children born between 1920 and 1921 were examined. Their life path was examined until 1980–1981. Among other things, qualitative interviews , questionnaires and health checks were used.
  • The Berkeley Guidance Study was led by Jean Macfarlane. 248 children born between 1928 and 1929 were examined. 214 of them were still in the sample at the end of the Second World War . Data was collected annually until 1946. Then the annual data collection ended. However, there were two follow-ups, 1959-1960 and 1969.

Results

On the basis of these two studies, Glen Elder postulated five paradigmatic principles, which he summarized in his "Life Course Theory":

1. The principle of lifelong change : People do not stop changing when they reach adulthood. Rather, even in adulthood, they adapt to new circumstances and seize opportunities.
2. The principle of time and space : people are always children of their time and their country. Some people are born when there is hunger and poverty (like the children in these two studies), others when there is war, and still others have other difficulties. However, humans have one excellent quality: they adapt to the circumstances and make the most of it. This is how they ultimately overcome the handicaps they face in life. This human ability not to give up, which is noticeable in times of need, is called resilience .
3. The principle of timing . It is interesting for the child's development when an accident hits them in life. Children born 1920–1921 reacted differently to the Great Depression than children born 1928–1929.
4. The principle of connected lives : People do not live for themselves, but rather are in relationships with other people. They influence each other.
5. The principle of human decision-making : people determine their own course of life. Your choices and actions contribute to what becomes of your life. However, they are subject to certain restrictions, for example due to historical and social circumstances.

Results in detail

Effects of impoverishment on educational and professional opportunities

Elder was interested in the impact of impoverishment on opportunities for education and jobs in good standing.

Table I.

never poor Grew up below the subsistence level
Achieving a university degree 61% 60%
Professional status in 1958 (1 = high, 7 = low) 2.5 2.2

Table I shows the effects of poverty on middle-class boys. As it turns out, poverty actually had no negative impact. In 1958 they were even more successful professionally than boys from families that were never impoverished.

Table II

never poor Grew up below the subsistence level
Achieving a university degree 50% 43%
Professional status in 1958 (1 = high, 7 = low) 2.8 3.1

Table II shows the effects of poverty on boys of the (upper stratum of the) working class. Here you can clearly see the negative effects of poverty. Children from impoverished families are less likely than those from non-impoverished families to graduate and their professional status is somewhat lower. But on the other hand: There are also very many social climbers among these children. None of the parents of these working-class children went to university, but even in the impoverished group, 43% of children graduate. The studies took place in California. What we see here is a California specialty. In other places, working-class children (regardless of whether they were impoverished or not) mostly became workers again. Why this is so will be explained later.

Effects on intelligence

No significant negative effects on intelligence were found in either the working class or middle-class boys . The results shown in the following table were determined with the Stanford-Binet.

never poor Grew up below the subsistence level
Worker's Boy's IQ 109.5 113.1
IQ of middle class boys 118.5 115.9

Advantages and disadvantages of the studies

The studies are pioneering studies, they are among the first on this topic, and they are also among the most expensive, extensive and well-documented. They were carried out by the University of Berkeley in California and are cited in many publications. An unusually large number of children participated in the studies for long-term studies.

However, there are also drawbacks to these studies - especially when it comes to researching poverty. The sample is not as representative as it should be. In both studies, members of the middle class are extremely overrepresented.

  • In the Berkeley Guidance Study, 2/3 of the children came from middle-class families. Most of the children were white and Protestant.
  • In the Oakland Growth Study, 3/4 of the children were from middle-class families. In this study there were even only white children and again most of the children were Protestant. The working-class children examined in this study were almost all from the upper stratum of the working class. There were no children from the lower classes.

So children were examined who, despite being poor, were privileged in other respects.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Elder, Glen H., Jr. (1999): Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. 25th Anniversary Edition . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  • Children in the "Great Economic Crisis" - Glen H. Elder: "Children of the Great Depression" in Zander, Margherita (2008): Poor child - strong child? The chance of resilience . VS - publishing house for social sciences. ISBN 978-3-531-15226-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1999. Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. 25th Anniversary Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
  2. ↑ Carolina Population Center: The Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley , accessed January 31, 2008.
  3. ↑ Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson. 2002: The Life Course and Aging: Challenges, Lessons, and New Directions . In Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life, Part II, Ed .: Richard A. Settersten, Jr. Amityville, NY: Baywood
  4. ↑ See for example Glen Elder: Children in time and place . Cambridge University Press 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-47801-4 , in this book especially the chapter: Rising above lifes disadvantage by Glen Elder and Tamara Hareven.
  5. ↑ Carolina Population Center: The Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley , accessed January 31, 2008.
  6. ↑ Carolina Population Center: The Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley , accessed January 31, 2008.
  7. ↑ Elder, Glen H. (1974): Children of the Great Depression, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 160
  8. ↑ Elder, Glen H. (1974): Children of the Great Depression, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 160
  9. ↑ Elder, Glen (1994): Children in time and place. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47801-4 , in this book especially the chapter: Rising above lifes disadvantage by Glen Elder and Tamara Hareven
  10. ↑ Elder, Glen H. (1974): Children of the Great Depression . Chicago: University of Chicago Press p. 311, Table A-18
  11. ↑ Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1999. Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. 25th Anniversary Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
  12. ↑ Carolina Population Center: The Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley , accessed January 31, 2008.
  13. ↑ On the question of what became of underprivileged children who grew up at the same time, see the contributions by Tamara K. Hareven.