5 toekenningen Postdoc-call Jeugd en Gezin


20 maart 2015

Binnen het onderzoeksprogramma Jeugd & Gezin is vorig jaar eenmalig een budget van EUR 200.000 beschikbaar gesteld voor postdocstudies van maximaal zes maanden. Onlangs is bekend geworden welke voorstellen zijn gehonoreerd.

Deze financiering was uitsluitend bedoeld voor de projectleiders van onderzoeksprojecten (die op 1 juli 2014 nog niet waren afgerond) binnen het onderzoeksprogramma Jeugd & Gezin.

Van de 16 ingediende aanvragen zijn er 5 toegekend.

Hieronder vindt u een overzicht van de toegekende aanvragen.

Parents, Friends, and Delinquency in Adolescence: The role of Parental and Adolescent Empathy
Prof. dr. Susan Branje, UU
The project Parents, Friends, and Delinquency in Adolescence has shown that parental over-control might undermine the autonomy needs of adolescents and result in more delinquent behavior, while monitoring efforts that are more in line with adolescents autonomy needs are only effective for
those adolescents that respect parental authority. The optimal level of parental control thus depends not only on the type of control but also on adolescents' openness to parental monitoring efforts. However, two important unanswered questions remain: First, why do some parents have
difficulties using age-appropriate forms of parental monitoring. And second, why do some adolescents tend to perceive their parents seemingly age-appropriate and non-over-controlling monitoring efforts as intrusive? We hypothesize that parental and adolescent empathy plays a significant role
in these questions. Adolescent empathy might affect their interpretation of parental monitoring efforts. We expect that adolescents with lower empathic skills tend to perceive parental control as more intrusive, and therefore, might be more inclined to be involved in deviant friendships and
minor delinquency to avoid the perceived negative controlling environment. Similarly, parental empathy might help parents to understand their child's autonomy needs and to adjust their monitoring behaviors to these needs and to use more optimal levels of control. Their children might
subsequently be less inclined to be involved in minor delinquent behavior. We will examine these hypotheses using seven waves of data of an ongoing longitudinal multi-method multi-informant study, including 497 Dutch adolescents between 13 and 20 years.

Welke gezinsfactoren kunnen criminogene invloeden van leeftijdgenoten en locaties tegengaan?
Prof. dr. Gerben Bruinsma, NSCR
Het doel van deze verdiepingsstudie is om na te gaan welke gezinsfactoren in staat zijn om criminaliteit bevorderende invloeden vanuit de directe leefwereld van adolescenten te temperen of zelfs teniet te doen. Onderzocht wordt welke aspecten van de ouder-kind relatie het effect van het
doorbrengen van tijd met leeftijdgenoten in criminogene locaties modereren. Ook wordt onderzocht in hoeverre een protectief effect van de ouder-kind relatie ten aanzien van het tijd doorbrengen op in criminogene locaties rechtstreeks, of indirect, via de invloed van ouders op individuele
kenmerken van de adolescenten (waaronder zelfcontrole en moraliteit) verloopt. Het verdiepingsonderzoek gaat daarbij verder dan bestaand onderzoek op dit terrein, omdat we zulke gedetailleerde informatie hebben verzameld en geanalyseerd over de leefomgeving van jongeren ? niet alleen waar zij
wonen, maar ook waar exact (tot op 200 meter) zij hun tijd doorbrengen en wat zij dan doen.

Fragile self-views in children with conduct problems: Do the same mechanisms apply?
Prof. dr. Bram Orobio de Castro, UU
In a series of six experiments, we demonstrated that specific kinds of parental praise inadvertently EXACERBATE narcissism and concomitant social problems. The applicability of these findings to children with behavior problems would be particularly interesting from both scientific and applied
perspectives. The present compounding project aims to test whether the established relations also exist in children with clinical conduct problems. To this end we will extend our comprehensive population sample with a clinical group of eighty children selected for severe conduct problems. We
will include the exact same measures as in the general population study (N = 400), to enable multi-group comparisons of the structural relations under study (in M-plus).

Coercion and prosociality: strategies for social dominance and resource control
Dr. Marjolijn Vermande, UU
Resource control (i.e., access to scarce assets such as food, toys, partners) is a significant outcome of human behavior. Traditionally, researchers have mainly focused on coercive strategies (threatening, taking) to achieve resource control (social dominance). However, researchers
increasingly acknowledge that prosocial strategies (helping, promising friendship, swapping) may also be an effective way to acquire resources (e.g., Resource Control Theory; RCT; Hawley, 2007). Whereas RCT posits that primarily relying on prosocial strategies yields above average levels of
resource control, recent empirical and theoretical work casts doubt on this assertion. This work suggests that in a new group using coercive strategies is effective in establishing resource control, while, over time, individuals engage in higher levels of prosocial strategies to maintain it.
The first goal of the project is to examine to what extent prosocial behavior may be a consequence of high resource control rather than an antecedent. The second goal of the project pertains to the role of social skills. It seems likely that good social skills (e.g., understanding other?s
cognitions and emotions) are required to successfully use strategies. However, how social skills may affect the link between strategy use and resource control/social dominance has hitherto not been examined directly. Increased knowledge is crucial for stimulating children to effectively
balance coercive (going ahead) and prosocial (going along) strategies.

Peer Selection and Influence Processes in Adolescent?s Risk Behaviour: The Role of Multiple Social Networks
Prof. dr. Wilma Vollebergh, UU
Adolescent's risk behaviour (RB) (an umbrella term for substance use and antisocial behaviour) is associated with devastating health consequences. The existing project focuses on the individual and group characteristics that may moderate the peer influence processes on adolescent?s engagement
in RB. The project uses social network data and analyses peer influence processes, controlling for peer selection processes, in a stochastic actor-based model by using the recent statistical programme SIENA (Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis). SIENA was set up to test the
co-evolution of one social network and behaviour. The proposed project will investigate the combined interdependence between the friendship network (close relations), the acquaintance network (more superficial interaction-based relations), and shared social identifications (as operationalized
by musical preferences) on the one hand, and RB on the other hand. Up to now, the interdependence with RB was analysed separately for the friendship and the acquaintance network. Very recent technical advances in SIENA enable us now to investigate simultaneously these multiple networks and
their interdependence with RB. These aspects will take the field of peer relations a step further, contribute to the development of effective health education programmes, and the novel statistical techniques will be further refined and made freely accessible to colleagues.

Bron: NWO