Consequences of Childhood and Adolescent Time Use for Health: Incorporating Race, Gender and SES Status Processes and School Context for an R01 resubmission

 MPRC seed grant will be used to significantly revise and focus an earlier R01 proposal in two different areas: by more explicitly incorporating and focusing on 1) race, gender and SES statuses, and 2) school context as key influences for how time use links to subsequent mental health and well-being. The recently submitted R01 proposal  focused on an investments in- children and ecological framework to assess how specific kinds of time and financial investments in childhood and adolescence matter for mental health and well-being in young adulthood. It proposed to assess the relevance of the timing of certain investment patterns in childhood versus adolescence and disentangle the importance of with whom children are engaging in activities, especially parents and peers, for outcomes. In substantially refocusing the R01 and preparing a great deal of analyses for resubmission, two areas will reframe the project. First, given different patterns of time use and investments in and outside of school for whites versus racial minorities, boys versus girls, and by social class, as well as different potential consequences of those time use patterns on health outcomes for different groups, these social statuses will become a more central part of the literature review of the proposal and of the analysis. Second, school resources and context will also be assessed more explicitly, and teachers’ assessments of children will be incorporated into the proposed analyses. The revised study will contribute to understanding the specific time use pathways through which social and economic inequalities influence a healthy transition to young adulthood for children.