Appendix B
CMS Subjects and Data For Testing
Oakland Growth Study
The original OGS sample was of 200 children, upper fifth and lower sixth graders in five Oakland and Berkeley schools. We worked with the1968 follow-up interviews of 98 participants, who were then about age 47. Of the 98 participants, we studied the complete interviews of a random group of 78. The interviews covered a wide range of topics, including relations with parents and siblings; marital history; occupational career; physical health; adult adjustment; and views on religion, parenting, student unrest, population control, and racial conflict.
Family Socialization Project
The core sample 1 of the FSP, begun in the late 1960s, included 139 parents and their children, who attended nursery schools in Berkeley (Baumrind, 1991a, 1991b). The study included observations of the children in natural settings, structured interviews of the children and their parents, and an array of instruments that assessed the parents’ influence on their children’s development.
For our testing , our core sample was 68 mothers and their children. We made our initial predictions based on assessments of 3- to 5-hour interviews of mothers and of their adolescents. We made our later predictions from part-interviews of the mothers when their children were 4, 9, and 15. All interviews were purged of information that could identify the subjects or might allow the raters to know which mother was related to which child.
Questions in the mothers’ interviews covered a wide range of social issues, all related to the children’s age. For example, when the children were 4, their mothers were asked how they disciplined their children. When the children were 15, their mothers were asked about rules regarding dating. When the children were 4, their mothers were interviewed once. When the children were 9, and again when they were 15, their mothers were interviewed twice. The 15-year-old adolescents were also interviewed twice.
In their first interviews, the mothers of 9-year-olds were asked how they saw themselves as mothers, what their parenting philosophies and practices were, what their hopes for their children were, and how they compared with the fathers on these issues. A mother’s interview included information about the members of the household. It included information about how much the father or others participated in caregiving, who the active caregiver was, how often caregivers changed, what the attitudes of different members of the household were toward the child under study, what values members of the household held, and so on. The adolescents’ first interviews included questions about their activities, their likes and dislikes in various situations and relationships, how they saw themselves, what they thought their future would hold, and so on.
The mothers’ and the adolescents’ second interviews focused on ethics and morality. They were asked questions about religion, ethics, and morality and were presented with moral dilemmas. For example, Jane has been drinking her parents’ liquor. The parents are talking about firing the maid for stealing their liquor. Should Jane tell her parents that she was the one taking the liquor? Why, and so on?
A Word About Longitudinal Studies
Longitudinal studies are uncommon. They are difficult and demanding. Sometimes a study takes longer than the initial investigators lived, as was the case of the Oakland Growth Study. The archives of a longitudinal study seldom include exactly what a subsequent investigator has in mind when he wants to research his particular, current interest. The ideas that could be addressed by a study may not appear relevant when a study begins, but may take on special relevance 10 or 15 years later. A study may be criticized for the particular sample of the population that was studied, or for the methods used by the study. These criticisms and others, necessarily, point to certain limitations of our own investigations. Nonetheless, taking into account limitations of longitudinal studies, they are a special avenue for investigators who are trying to understand how we got to be who we are.
I am reminded of a story about Freud. Someone said to him, "All that you have is a theory of the unconscious." Freud replied, "Yes that is true. It is like life. It is not much, but it is all we have." I might put it differently. Taking into account the limitations of the few longitudinal studies that have been archived, they are like life. Life is limited, but it is amazing that we have life at all.
1 The actual FSP population size varied somewhat over the course of the study. Some families dropped out of the study. Not every family member was available for every test session.
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