A $5.4 million study led by UC Davis will ask 600 Mexican American families in Sacramento what factors help their children to grow up happy and healthy.

The study will be the first of its size and longevity in the nation to use in-depth interviews of Mexican American children and their parents to learn about family values and solving conflicts, said Rand Conger, UC Davis professor of human development and principal investigator for the project.

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the five-year study will begin this fall by working with people in the Mexican American community to determine specific details about how the study will be conducted.

With the help of the Sacramento City Unified School District, the researchers hope to enroll 600 families with fifth graders during the next two years. The study is looking for families with a diversity of incomes, education and family history among first-, second- and third-generation Mexican Americans.

The study has received support from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., California State Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, Calif. Assemblymember Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, (while on the Sacramento City Council) and Catholic Bishop William K. Weigand of Sacramento.

Conger and his fellow researchers want to find out what contributes to good mental health, continued education and resilience against substance abuse.

"We really don't know what the differences are between those who do well and those who do poorly -- there is no good developmental study of Mexican American children and their families, and yet they will soon be the largest single ethnic group in California," Conger said.

In fact, Mexican Americans were chosen for this study because they comprise 77 percent of the California Latino population, and two-thirds of all U.S. Latinos. Latinos comprise more than 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The researchers believe that because each Latin country has specific strengths and traditions, a study of all Latino families would be too broad to yield specific cultural conclusions.

Conger's co-leader in the study, Ana Mari Cauce, chair of the University of Washington Department of Psychology, points out that this study focuses on a pivotal demographic sector.

"About a quarter of all children under 18 in this country are immigrants or children of immigrants," she said. "This group of youth will play an increasingly important role in the future of this country, indeed they are our future. It is essential for us to better understand this process so we can best support them."

Families will be telling research staffers about their family dynamics, conflicts they may have and how they resolve them. Conger and his colleagues, who include nine human development and psychology researchers from across the country, will be measuring the ways families solve various problems over time.

Some 20 to 30 staff members, many of whom will be hired from the Mexican American community, will be working with the families over the period to collect the information.

What makes this study different from other long-term family studies in the nation is its focus on a particular Latino culture and its values. Conger and his fellow researchers expect that the study will reveal how people of Mexican heritage successfully adapt to a new culture.

As a first-generation immigrant herself, Cauce said she is especially curious about how the challenge of adjusting to a new culture affects parent-child relationships and the stresses it may create for families, and how families overcome them.

"We think that cultural factors that offer support may include the traditional Mexican value of respect across generations and the high importance that Mexican Americans place on family," Conger added.

Research colleague William Vega, professor of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, believes the study will help researchers identify and understand the changes that weaken protective cultural effects.

"It is critical to understand that Mexican immigrants have far fewer behavioral problems including both mental disorders and drug abuse," said Vega, a nationally recognized authority in mental health and family studies of Latinos. "In later generations, the cultural protective factors erode and rates begin to approximate the higher rates found in the U.S. population."

Conger also expects to find common factors that help children survive adversity, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. With his wife and fellow UC Davis human development researcher Katherine Conger, he has been following the lives and fortunes of children from 550 families of European origin living in rural Iowa since 1989, and another 900 African American families in Georgia and Iowa since 1995.

A key factor in those studies that helped children survive adversity was involved and caring parents, he reported.

Conger said he would expect to see preliminary results by the end of the second year of the study, in spring 2007. The results and their implications for helping families under stress will be shared with the California State Department of Social Services, the National Hispanic Science Network and, of course, with the national agencies that are funding the study.

The results will also have implications for clinical services for adolescents and families, points out fellow researcher Vega.

"Ultimately this information could be used to develop preventive interventions for this population, which is the most rapidly increasing in the United States -- estimated at 102 million Latinos by 2050 or 25 percent of the U.S. population," he said.

For more information about this study, contact Dannelle Larsen-Rife, (530) 757-8456, dlarsenrife@ucdavis.edu.