What did researchers learn from the CONTEXTS study that informed the NC Life Study?

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Dr. Susan Annett: We were really interested in measuring those contexts at the level of the context. For example for the family, we in the original study, interviewed parents to get their perceptions of what the family was like. The extent of conflict? What sort of parenting approaches they used? At the friendship level, we did aim for getting a census of all the kids in school. We got kids and their friends and they identified each other. So we knew who were best friends and that also enabled us to look at the larger peer network. For the neighborhoods, we had addresses for all the families so we could therefore geocode the data. So we could access information like what are the census characteristics of where a kid lives? I think what was it was certainly not unique but it was unusual in that we wanted to measure those contexts at their level not just from the perception of the kid who would say, "Oh I live in this sort of neighborhood or my parents say this or my best friend smokes cigarettes." But to try to get the info from the perspective of those outer context to understand how to characterize them.