The Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley
Description of the Study and Data Collection
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, two pioneering studies of
children were launched at the Institute of Child Welfare (now Human
Development) at the University of California, Berkeley:
- The Oakland
Growth Study, under the direction of Harold Jones and
Herbert Stolz,
was launched in 1931 to study the normal physical, intellectual, and
social development of boys and girls, and commenced data collection in
1932. The 167 children who were intensively studied from 1932 to 1939
were initially selected from the fifth and sixth grades (birth years,
1920-1921) of five elementary schools in the northeastern section of
Oakland, California. There were five waves of data collection during
the adult years, finishing in 1980-1981. These follow-ups generally
included interviews, health assessments, personality inventories, and
fact-sheet questionnaires.
- The
Berkeley Guidance
Study, under the direction of Jean Macfarlane,
started with a sample of 248 infants who were born in Berkeley,
California in 1928-1929. This sample was divided into two groups; an
intensively studied group which provided detailed annual information on
socioeconomic conditions and family patterns, and a less intensively
studied "control" group which was matched on social and economic
characteristics. Most of the children were Caucasian and Protestant,
and two-thirds came from middle-class families.
The basic cohort includes 214 of these children and their families who
participated in the study through the 1930s and up to the end of World
War II. Annual data collection ended in 1946, but there were two adult
follow-ups (1959-1960 and 1969) in which most of the children
participated.
Research
Program
Elder's most famous book and a source of life course theory,
Children of the Great
Depression was based
on his work with the Oakland cohort. In that book, he combined a
social-historical and developmental approach to assess the influence
of the economic crisis on the life course of those 167 people born in
1920-1921. The book was published in 1974 (there is now a 25th
Anniversary edition out that includes a new chapter) and is based on
data collected through the early 1960s. This chapter investigates the
impact of World War II and includes the results from comparative
studies with a younger birth cohort, the Berkeley Guidance Study.
Contrary to expectations at the time, Elder and his colleagues found
that a great many of the children in the Oakland sample succeeded in
rising above their childhood disadvantages and in achieving a full life
to the seventh decade. The Oakland children encountered Depression
hardships after a relatively secure phase of early development in the
1920s, and they left home after the worst years of the 1930s for
education, work, and family.
This historical pattern differed strikingly for the members of the
Berkeley Guidance study born at the end of the 1920s. These children
experienced the vulnerable years of childhood during the worst years of
the Great Depression, a period of extraordinary stress and instability.
Their adolescence coincided with the "empty households of World War II"
when parents worked from sunup to sundown in essential industry.
A life
course theoretical orientation towards understanding the social and
psychological
development of these two cohorts led Elder to propose five paradigmatic
principles which together define "life course theory:"
- The principle of lifelong development and aging
(see Elder & Johnson, 2002).
- The principle of
historical time and
place...The life
course of individuals is
embedded
in and shaped by the historical times and events they experience over
their lifetime.
- The
principle of timing in
lives...The
developmental impact of a
succession of life transitions or events is contingent on when they
occur in a person's life.
- The principle of linked lives...Lives are lived interdependently, and
social-historical influences are expressed through this network of
shared relationships.
- The
principle of human
agency...Individuals construct their own life
course through the choices and actions they take within the
opportunities and constraints of history and social
circumstances.
Selected Citations
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1974.
Children of the Great Depression: Social
Change in Life Experience. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
(1999, reissued as 25th Anniversary Edition, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.)
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1979. “Historical Change in Life Patterns and
Personality.” Pp. 117-159 in
Life-Span Development and Behavior,
edited by P. Baltes and O. Brim, Jr. (Volume 2). New York: Academic
Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Jeffrey K. Liker. 1982. “Hard Times in
Women’s Lives: Historical Influences Across 40 Years.”
American Journal of Sociology 88(2): 241-269.
Liker, Jeffrey K., and Glen H. Elder, Jr. 1983. “Economic
Hardship and Marital Relations in the 1930s.”
American
Sociological Review 48(3): 343-359.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Jeffrey K. Liker, and Catherine E. Cross. 1984.
“Parent-Child Behavior in the Great Depression: Life Course and
Intergenerational Influences.” Pp. 109-158 in
Life-Span
Development and Behavior, edited by Paul B. Baltes and Orville G. Brim,
Jr. (Volume 6). New York: Academic Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Jeffrey K. Liker, and Bernard J. Jaworski. 1984.
“Hardship in Lives: Depression Influences from the 1930s to Old
Age in Postwar America.” Pp. 161-201 in
Life-Span Developmental
Psychology: Historical and Generational Effects, edited by Kathleen
McCluskey and Hayne Reese. New York: Academic Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Tri Van Nguyen, and Avshalom Caspi. 1985.
“Linking Family Hardship to Children’s Lives.”
Child
Development 56(2): 361-375.
Caspi, Avshalom, and Glen H. Elder, Jr. 1986. “Life Satisfaction
in Old Age: Linking Social Psychology and History.”
Psychology
and Aging 1(1): 18-26.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1986. “Military Times and Turning Points in
Men’s Lives.”
Developmental Psychology 22(2): 233-245.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Avshalom Caspi, and Geraldine Downey. 1986.
“Problem Behavior and Family Relationships: Life Course and
Intergenerational Themes.” Pp. 293-340 in
Human Development and
the Life Course: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Aage B.
Sørensen, Franz E. Weinert, and Lonnie R. Sherrod. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Avshalom Caspi, and Tri Van Nguyen. 1986.
“Resourceful and Vulnerable Children: Family Influences in Hard
Times.” Pp. 167-186 in
Development as Action in Context: Problem
Behavior and Normal Youth Development, edited by R.K. Silbereisen, K.
Eyferth, and G. Rudinger. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., Geraldine Downey, and Catherine E. Cross. 1986.
“Family Ties and Life Changes: Hard Times and Hard Choices in
Women’s Lives since the Great Depression.” Pp. 151-183 in
Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Intergenerational Relations, edited
by Nancy Datan, Anita L. Greene, and Hayne W. Reese. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Caspi, Avshalom, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Daryl J. Bem. 1987.
“Moving Against the World: Life Course Patterns of Explosive
Children.”
Developmental Psychology 23(2): 308-313.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1987. “War Mobilization and the Life Course:
A Cohort of World War II Veterans.”
Sociological Forum 2(3):
449-472.
Caspi, Avshalom, and Glen H. Elder, Jr. 1988. “Childhood
Precursors of the Life Course: Early Personality and Life
Disorganization.” Pp. 115-142 in
Child Development in Life Course
Perspective, edited by E. Mavis Hetherington, Richard M. Lerner, and
Marion Perlmutter. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Caspi, Avshalom, and Glen H. Elder, Jr. 1988. “Emergent Family
Patterns: The Intergenerational Construction of Problem Behaviour and
Relationships.” Pp. 218-240 in
Relationships within Families:
Mutual Influences, edited by Robert A. Hinde and Joan Stevenson-Hinde.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Caspi, Avshalom, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Daryl J. Bem. 1988.
“Moving Away from the World: Life Course Patterns of Shy
Children.”
Developmental Psychology 24(6): 824-831.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Elizabeth C. Clipp. 1988. “Combat
Experience, Comradeship, and Psychological Health.” Pp. 131-156
in
Human Adaptation to Extreme Stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam,
edited by John P. Wilson, Zev Harel, and Boaz Kahana. New York: Plenum.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Elizabeth C. Clipp. 1988. “Wartime
Losses and Social Bonding: Influences Across 40 Years in Men’s
Lives.”
Psychiatry 51: 177-198.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Elizabeth Colerick Clipp. 1989. “Combat
Experience and Emotional Health: Impairment and Resilience in Later
Life.”
Journal of Personality 57(2): 311-341.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1999. “Beyond ‘Children of the Great
Depression’.” Pp. 301-343 (Chapter 11) in
Children of the
Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience, by Glen H. Elder,
Jr. 25th Anniversary Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson. 2002. “The
Life Course and Aging: Challenges, Lessons, and New Directions.”
Pp. 49-81 in
Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life, Part II, edited by Richard A. Settersten, Jr. (Chapter 2). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
