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Senate Faculty
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Joseph L. Mahoney
Associate Professor
Department of Education
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Research Projects
Current Projects
Dr. Mahoney is currently involved in several on-going projects aimed at understanding better the developmental implications of how children and adolescents spend their out-of-school time. One project is the Yale Study of Children's After-school Time. This four-year longitudinal study of 651 school-age children (Grades 1-3 at baseline) has been supported by grants from the NICHHD and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Most of the study participants live in poverty and are Hispanic or African American. A central aim of this project is to understand how the ecology of children's after-school arrangements (e.g., after-school programs, parent care, relative care, self care) relates to the development of social, academic, and physical health.
In the team's recent studies, they have found that variation in child characteristics, the type, amount, and quality of after-school care arrangements, and the neighborhood conditions wherein such care takes place, are important contributors to children's development. In terms of basic findings, this work has shown: (1) that many children experience a combination of different after-school arrangements across the week, (2) over time, patterns of care predominated by regular participation in after-school programs are indicative of developmental gains in school motivation, reading achievement, and peer acceptance, and significant declines in clinical obesity and aggression in the school classroom, and (3) that the associated benefits of after-school programs are particularly apparent when compared to children whose pattern of after-school care involves a combination of self care and relative care.
Attention to additional person-context features clarifies further these basic findings. For instance, the associated benefits of after-school programs depend markedly on individual differences in participation (e.g., attendance, engagement) and features of the program considered (e.g., quality and content). Moreover, using a multilevel modeling approach, they have found the social-academic risks linked to self care are observed primarily for children living neighborhoods where the levels of crime and violence are high during the hours following school dismissal.
A second set of projects Mahoney has been involved with entail collaborative efforts with colleagues at other universities across the United States. One such collaboration involves researchers at the Center for Developmental Science in Chapel Hill. In this project the long-term processes by which school-based extracurricular activity participation influences the social/educational adjustment process from middle childhood through young adulthood were studied. Specifically, this research has focused on identifying mediating mechanisms (e.g., formation of new peer relationships, facilitation of interpersonal competence, aspirations for the future) that help to explain why extracurricular participation during adolescence is linked to long-term increases in educational attainment and reductions in antisocial and criminal offending during young adulthood.
Another research collaboration involves colleagues at the Universities of Michigan and Texas at Austin. There the research has been concerned with the time children and adolescents spend in a variety of out-of-school pursuits (e.g., organized activities, watching television, hanging out, playing games, household chores) in relation to their academic and emotional well being and relationships with parents. In a recent study the team evaluated the scientific evidence for two somewhat different perspectives concerning out-of-school time and youth development: (1) that youth may be "over-scheduled" in organized activities to the degree that their academic performance, psychosocial well-being, and relationships with parents are undermined, (2) that organized activity participation ordinarily contributes to positive youth development and promotes healthy adjustment in these areas. The evidence, including their own original analyses, strongly supports a conclusion that organized activity participation is related to positive growth and development for the vast majority of children and adolescents in the United States.
Finally, since the mid-1990s, Dr. Mahoney has worked cross-nationally with colleagues in Sweden. In this research, the team has conducted a series of studies aimed at understanding whether and how participation in unstructured and peer-driven leisure contexts affects social and personality development. For example, as a national policy, the government of Sweden has developed a system of recreation centers for adolescents with the aim of reducing antisocial behavior and crime. However, these centers are organized in a manner that is incongruent with empirically-supported features of beneficial youth activities.
In their investigations of Sweden's national policy experiment, Mahoney and his colleagues have found consistently that - contrary to the policy objective - participation in these centers is associated with marked increases in behavior problems, including persistent criminality into adulthood. The research identifies a combination of person and context factors that help to explain the antisocial trajectory of the youth center participants. Specifically, they have found that a selection process typically leads to an aggregation of antisocial youth at these centers. The aggregation of deviant youth, coupled with limited adult guidance/supervision and skill-building objectives at the centers, reliably predicts increases in the participants' antisocial behavior over time. The associated increase in antisocial behaviors holds for youth who were identified as having both high social and academic competence prior to their involvement in these youth centers.
To carry out these research activities, Dr. Mahoney has collaborates with an interdisciplinary team of investigators in education, developmental and clinical psychology, pediatrics, sociology, and psychiatry from across the United States and in Europe.
Forthhcoming Projects
Following results from their ongoing longitudinal investigations concerning the ecology of after-school time for poor children, Dr. Mahoney plans to begin a new, related phase of the project in 2007-2008. This new project phase would involve an experimental study to assess the impact of improving after-school program quality in relation to the social and academic development of disadvantaged children.
The experimental manipulation is targeted at the program level and involves varying systematically the provision of quality training to staff and directors at existing after-school programs. A primary goal of this study will be to provide a rigorous assessment of whether staff training impacts program process quality parameters and whether, over time, such change translates into improved social and educational outcomes for the participants. A secondary goal is to evaluate whether the anticipated benefits of the intervention may vary according either to the initial quality of the program(s) at baseline and/or the characteristics of the participants attending the program(s).
A second planned project for 2007-2009 (funding under review at NICCHD) is aimed at understanding the associated consequences of summertime for adolescent development. Summertime constitutes about 23% of the calendar year for school-aged youth. It also represents longest consecutive period of out-of-school time. However, less than 1% of published studies over the past 40 years have been concerned with summer and, as a result, very little is known about how youth spend the summer months or the possible of impact of this time use for adolescents’ academic, social, and physical development during school year. Findings from this study would begin to fill the knowledge gap in these areas and specify the risks and opportunities of summertime for adolescent development.
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