Does the quality of the home, school, and community settings of rural adolescents affect subsequent levels of mental health and physiological stress? How does family poverty influence the relationship between setting-level quality and well-being? Evans and his team have been studying a sample of rural youth for more than a decade, and the Foundation has been funding this project since 2002. This grant will allow Evans to continue his study of 267 youth from 30 rural communities in upstate New York. In previous waves of this study, Evans collected multiple setting measures, including measures of maternal responsiveness, family conflict, household chaos, student-teacher relationship quality, school quality, extracurricular resources, community social capital, youth resources in the community, relationships with community adults, and educational attainment. He also measured levels of psychological distress and physiological stress. In this phase of the study, Evans will explore how the family, school, and community settings of 17 year-olds living in poverty in rural areas influence mental and physical health by age 22.
Does the quality of the home, school, and community settings of rural adolescents affect subsequent levels of mental health and physiological stress?
