pa2itasdata

[pa2itasdata]

Week 2 assignment: running my first Python program

The program looks at the frequency distribution of the following 3 variables, which should be helpful in answering my research question:

H1SE4, answers the following question: “Compared with people your age, how intelligent are you?”

1 - moderately below average 2 - slightly below average 3 - about average 4 - slightly above average 5 - moderately above average 6 - extremely above average 96 - refused 98 - don’t know

H1NM2, which asks whether the biological mother is still living:

0 - no 1 - yes 7 - legitimate skip 8 - don’t know

And finally, H1NM8, which asks how old were you when you last lived with your mother, where ages are recorded from 0 to 19, with 97 signifying a skip, and 98 signifying “don’t know”

The program I run is as follows:

And the outputs look like this:

counts for H1SE4, perceived intelligence 1       77 2      322 3     2502 4     1420 5     1735 6      418 96       5 98      25

percentages for H1SE4, perceived intelligence 1     1.183887 2     4.950800 3    38.468635 4    21.832718 5    26.675892 6     6.426814 96    0.076876 98    0.384379

We can see that a majority of teenagers see themselves as having average intelligence

counts for H1NM2, mother still living 0     84 1     651 7     5764 8     5

percentages for H1NM2, mother still living

0    1.291513 1    10.009225 7    88.622386 8    0.076876

These percentages show that a majority of absent mothers are still living

counts for H1NM8, age when mother gone

0    23 1    4 2    17 3    20 4    17 5    25 6    22 7    17 8    25 9    23 10   32 11   40 12   52 13   64 14   64 15   73 16   73 17   57 18   36 19    4 97    5805 98    10

In this variable count, it is interesting to see that most of the respondents skipped the question

percentages for H1NM8, age when mother gone

0     0.353629 1     0.061501 2     0.261378 3     0.307503 4     0.261378 5     0.384379 6     0.338253 7     0.261378 8     0.384379 9     0.353629 10    0.492005 11    0.615006 12    0.799508 13    0.984010 14    0.984010 15    1.122386 16    1.122386 17    0.876384 18    0.553506 19    0.061501 97   89.252768 98    0.153752

Finally, I wanted to know what percentage of teenagers had lost their mother at age 2 and under.

counts for H1NM8, mother gone age 2 and under 2    17 1     4 0    23

percentages for H1NM8, mother gone age 2 and under 2   0.386364 1   0.090909 0   0.522727

[pa2itasdata]

Data Management and Visualisation: week 1 assignment

For my first assignment on this Data Analysis course, I have chosen the The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth). This data is from: 

“a representative school-based survey of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States. The Wave 1 survey focuses on factors that may influence adolescents’ health and risk behaviors, including personal traits, families, friendships, romantic relationships, peer groups, schools, neighborhoods, and communities...”

With regards to this data, I have chosen to study the association between the lack of a resident mother, and the degree of self-efficacy in adolescents. 

My choice of question is partly personal, being the daughter of an absent mother myself. However, I also believe that is an interesting topic in its own right.

My hypothesis is that adolescents who live in households where the mother is absent are more likely to have low self-efficacy.

My second topic to investigate in association with the one above, is whether boys and girls are affected differently. Similarly, it would be interesting to look at any possible correlations between ethnic group and absent mothers.

My custom codebook therefore comprises of the following variables:

Section 1: General introductory

Section 9: Self Efficacy

Section 12: Non-Resident Biological Mother

For my literature review, I used the following set of search terms in consecutive searches. The search terms listed first were the most successful, and yielded the most relevant articles:

development of adolescents with an absent mother

self efficacy of children with an absent mother

absent mother

The most relevant articles I encountered address the structure of families and how different family structures are likely to have varied outcomes in the development of adolescents. Most articles cover a wider dataset, and a wider set of outcomes. However, with respect to my topic, the articles that I found most useful are the following:

Heard, H. E. (2007), Fathers, Mothers, and Family Structure: Family Trajectories, Parent Gender, and Adolescent Schooling. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69: 435–450. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2007.00375.x According to this paper, previous research has neither fully examined family structure across the life course nor considered increasing variation in family types. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 11,318), the author examines the influence of longitudinal measures across childhood of family structure duration and the number and timing of parent transitions (entrances and exits) on indicators of grade point average (GPA), college expectations, and suspension or expulsion in adolescence. It is also examined whether parent gender moderates these effects. Results show that mother transitions during early childhood affect all outcomes, whereas time in mother-absent families influences GPA and school discipline. The author finds evidence for parent gender differences in transition effects; mother transitions, especially early ones, have more severe consequences than father transitions.

Tillman, K. H. (2007), Family Structure Pathways and Academic Disadvantage among Adolescents in Stepfamilies*. Sociological Inquiry, 77: 383–424. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.2007.00198.x Using National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data, this research documents the prevalence of the different stepfamily forms in which American adolescents live, examines the family structure pathways through which adolescents traveled to arrive at their current family form, and explores the effects of these pathways on grades, school-related behavior, and college expectations (N = 13,988). Compared to those who have always lived with both biological parents, youth in pathways including divorce/separation or a nonunion birth experience significantly lower academic outcomes, while those whose pathways include parental death do not. Specific effects vary, however, according to the outcome examined. For example, the combination of divorce/separation and movement into the least common of family forms is associated with particularly poor GPA outcomes. Divorce/separation is also more detrimental than nonunion birth for college expectations, particularly when coupled with a transition into a stepfamily based on cohabitation. Divorce/separation and nonunion birth have similar, negative effects on school behavior problems. Overall, results indicate that living in a stepfamily does not benefit youth, and can in some ways disadvantage them, even compared to their peers in single-mother families. This is especially the case if youth transition into a stepfamily following a combination of stressful family experiences. These findings underscore the importance of examining family effects from a longitudinal perspective.

Dornbusch, Sanford M., et al. “Single Parents, Extended Households, and the Control of Adolescents.” Child Development, vol. 56, no. 2, 1985, pp. 326–341. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1129723. This paper uses a representative national sample of adolescents to study the interrelationships among family structure, patterns of family decision making, and deviant behavior among adolescents. Mother-only households are shown to be associated with particular patterns of family decision making and adolescent deviance, even when family income and parental education are controlled. In contrast to adolescents in households with 2 natural parents, youth in mother-only households are perceived as more likely to make decisions without direct parental input and more likely to exhibit deviant behavior. The presence of an additional adult in a mother-only household, especially for males, is associated with increased parental control and a reduction in various forms of adolescent deviance. Finally, patterns of family decision making and family structure both make independent contributions to adolescent deviance, and the impact of family structure on deviance of adolescent males is hardly affected by controlling for patterns of family decision making.

Masten, A., Best, K., & Garmezy, N. (1990). Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity. Development and Psychopathology, 2 (4), 425-444. doi:10.1017/S0954579400005812 This article reviews the research on resilience in order to delineate its significance and potential for understanding normal development. Resilience refers to the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances. Three resilience phenomena are reviewed: (a) good outcomes in high-risk children, (b) sustained competence in children under stress, and (c) recovery from trauma. It is concluded that human psychological development is highly buffered and that long-lasting consequences of adversity usually are associated with either organic damage or severe interference in the normative protective processes embedded in the caregiving system. Children who experience chronic adversity fare better or recover more successfully when they have a positive relationship with a competent adult, they are good learners and problem-solvers, they are engaging to other people, and they have areas of competence and perceived efficacy valued by self or society. Future studies of resilience will need to focus on processes that facilitate adaptation. Such studies have the potential to illuminate the range and self-righting properties of, constraints on, and linkages among different aspects of cognitive, emotional, and social development.