Duane F. Alexander (1940-2020).

This article is in memory of Duane F. Alexander, who directed the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) from 1986 to 2009. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Developing population health scientists: Findings from an evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program.

•RWJF Health & Society Scholars (HSS) program outcomes evaluated.•HSS alumni have higher scholarly productivity and impact than control group.•HSS alumni are more engaged in population health research than controls.•HSS alumni and controls are similar on other outcome measures.•Training programs can be evaluated with adequate attention to selection bias.

Culture and demography: from reluctant bedfellows to committed partners.

Demography and culture have had a long but ambivalent relationship. Cultural influences are widely recognized as important for demographic outcomes but are often "backgrounded" in demographic research. I argue that progress toward a more successful integration is feasible and suggest a network model of culture as a potential tool. The network model bridges both traditional (holistic and institutional) and contemporary (tool kit) models of culture used in the social sciences and offers a simple vocabulary for a diverse set of cultural concepts, such as attitudes, beliefs, and norms, as well as quantitative measures of how culture is organized. The proposed model conceptualizes culture as a nested network of meanings represented by schemas that range in complexity from simple concepts to multifaceted cultural models. I illustrate the potential value of a model using accounts of the cultural changes underpinning the transformation of marriage in the United States and point to developments in the social, cognitive, and computational sciences that could facilitate the application of the model in empirical demographic research.

A Cognitive-Social Model of Fertility Intentions.

We examine the use and value of fertility intentions against the backdrop of theory and research in the cognitive and social sciences. First, we draw on recent brain and cognition research to contextualize fertility intentions within a broader set of conscious and unconscious mechanisms that contribute to mental function. Next, we integrate this research with social theory. Our conceptualizations suggest that people do not necessarily have fertility intentions; they form them only when prompted by specific situations. Intention formation draws on the current situation and on schemas of childbearing and parenthood learned through previous experience, imbued by affect, and organized by self-representation. Using this conceptualization, we review apparently discordant knowledge about the value of fertility intentions in predicting fertility. Our analysis extends and deepens existing explanations for the weak predictive validity of fertility intentions at the individual level and provides a social-cognitive explanation for why intentions predict as well as they do. When focusing on the predictive power of intentions at the aggregate level, our conceptualizations lead us to focus on how social structures frustrate or facilitate intentions and how the structural environment contributes to the formation of reported intentions in the first place. Our analysis suggests that existing measures of fertility intentions are useful but to varying extents and in many cases despite their failure to capture what they seek to measure.

Challenges in replicating interventions.

PURPOSE: To describe and reflect on an effort to document, through a set of 6 interventions, the process of adapting effective youth risk behavior interventions for new settings, and to provide insights into how this might best be accomplished. METHODS: Six studies were funded by the NIH, starting in 1999. The studies were funded in response to a Request for Applications (RFA) to replicate HIV prevention interventions for youth. Researchers were to select an HIV risk reduction intervention program shown to be effective in one adolescent population and to replicate it in a new community or different adolescent population. This was to be done while systematically documenting those processes and aspects of the intervention hypothesized to be critical to the development of community-based, culturally sensitive programs. The replication was to assess the variations necessary to gain cooperation, implement a locally feasible and meaningful intervention, and evaluate the outcomes in the new setting. The rationale for this initiative and description of the goals and approaches to adaptation of the funded researchers are described. RESULTS: Issues relevant to all interventions are discussed, in addition to those unique to replication. The processes and the consequences of the adaptations are then discussed. The further challenges in taking a successful intervention "to scale" are not discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Replications of effective interventions face all of the challenges of implementation design, plus additional challenges of balancing fidelity to the original intervention and sensitivity to the needs of new populations.

Explaining Family Change and Variation: Challenges for Family Demographers.

Twenty years ago, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a request for proposals that resulted in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), a unique survey valuable to a wide range of family scholars. This paper describes the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of family demographers to build on the progress enabled by the NSFH and many other theoretical and methodological innovations. Our work, also supported by NICHD, will develop plans for research and data collection to address the central question of what causes family change and variation. We outline the group's initial assessments of orienting frameworks, key aspects of family life to study, and theoretical and methodological challenges for research on family change. Finally, we invite family scholars to follow our progress and to help develop this shared public good.

Social science and health research: growth at the National Institutes of Health.

Programs within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have recently taken steps to enhance social science contributions to health research. A June 2000 conference convened by the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research highlighted the role of the social sciences in health research and developed an agenda for advancing such research. The conference and agenda underscored the importance of research on basic social scientific concepts and constructs, basic social science research on the etiology of health and illness, and the application of basic social science constructs in health services, treatment, and prevention research. Recent activities at NIH suggest a growing commitment to social science research and its integration into interdisciplinary multilevel studies of health.