# Harmonizing Two NICHD-funded Datasets to Study Youths' Behavioral Health

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO · 2020 · $78,479

## Abstract

Abstract: Despite widespread recognition of the importance of behavioral health -- in its own right and in
support of physical health -- and of the need to harmonize datasets -- including with rigorous psychometric
procedures for measure linking -- most large public-use U.S. datasets -- including those funded by NICHD --
contain behavioral health assessments that have yet to be systematically and fully harmonized. Remedying
this state of affairs provides an opportunity to rapidly increase the return on investment in these datasets and
to deepen and broaden understanding about the ecological, economic, and social factors that support
children's adaptive behavioral development, especially among socially disadvantaged children exposed to
high-risk settings. The purpose of this project, therefore, is to harmonize a behavioral health measure (the
Behavior Problems Index [BPI]) in two NICHD-funded datasets (the Children of the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth 1979 [C-NLSY79] and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development Supplements
[PSID-CDS]), and, in so doing, to examine whether the BPI works in equivalent ways between datasets and
among demographic subgroups as well as to compare multiple strategies for linking to assure that scores are
on a common metric. As a result, future studies can be sure that results reflect true subgroup differences in
behavioral health, and not differences in the way mothers report about their sons and daughters or their
younger versus older children or in the way that mothers vary in interpreting youths' behaviors across culture
and context. We will demonstrate the utility of our approach by estimating differences in youths' behavioral
health by child age, gender, and race-ethnicity; maternal education and family income; and region and
urbanicity of residence. By archiving and disseminating the scores and code, the harmonized datasets will be
readily accessible to other scholars who can use them to replicate and extend our work to numerous other
important questions about how youths' behavioral health develops over time and what ecological factors and
local resources support healthier development. To facilitate such future studies, we will also provide a
crosswalk of variables relevant to a range of high-priority research questions that take advantage of the
studies' multigenerational designs. In so doing, our work can stimulate existing users of the C-NLSY79 and
PSID-CDS to use the datasets in new ways and for new users to work with the data. Interest in the datasets is
demonstrated by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications that have already examined the BPI in both
datasets. Yet, these studies have had to rely on assuming that the BPI works in equivalent ways across
subgroups, despite a growing body of studies demonstrating non-equivalence and despite scholars using ad
hoc approaches or raising concerns about such assumptions. The harmonized datasets produced by the
project will facilitate such work,...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10002248
- **Project number:** 5R03HD098310-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Ariel M Aloe
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $78,479
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-01 → 2021-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10002248

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10002248, Harmonizing Two NICHD-funded Datasets to Study Youths' Behavioral Health (5R03HD098310-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10002248. Licensed CC0.

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