An update on the assessment of culture and environment in the ABCD Study®: Emerging literature and protocol updates over three measurement waves.
Raul Gonzalez, Erin L Thompson, Mariana Sanchez, Amanda Morris, Marybel R Gonzalez, Sarah W Feldstein Ewing, Michael J Mason, Judith Arroyo, Katia Howlett, Susan F Tapert, Robert A Zucker
Author Information
Raul Gonzalez: Center for Children and Families and Department of Psychology, Florida International University, USA. Electronic address: raul.gonzalezjr@fiu.edu.
Erin L Thompson: Center for Children and Families and Department of Psychology, Florida International University, USA.
Mariana Sanchez: Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work, Florida International University, USA.
Amanda Morris: Amanda Sheffield Morris, Laureate Institute for Brain Research and Oklahoma State University, USA.
Marybel R Gonzalez: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Sarah W Feldstein Ewing: Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island, USA.
Michael J Mason: Center for Behavioral Health Research, University of Tennessee, USA.
Judith Arroyo: National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, USA.
Katia Howlett: National Institute on Drug Abuse, USA.
Susan F Tapert: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Robert A Zucker: Department of Psychiatry and Addiction Center, University of Michigan, USA.
Advances in our understanding of risk and resilience factors in adolescent brain health and development increasingly demand a broad set of assessment tools that consider a youth's peer, family, school, neighborhood, and cultural contexts in addition to neurobiological, genetic, and biomedical information. The Culture and Environment (CE) Workgroup (WG) of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study curates these important components of the protocol throughout ten years of planned data collection. In this report, the CE WG presents an update on the evolution of the ABCD Study® CE protocol since study inception (Zucker et al., 2018), as well as emerging findings that include CE measures. Background and measurement characteristics of instruments present in the study since baseline have already been described in our 2018 report, and therefore are only briefly described here. New measures introduced since baseline are described in more detail. Descriptive statistics on all measures are presented based on a total sample of 11,000+ youth and their caregivers assessed at baseline and the following two years. Psychometric properties of the measures, including longitudinal aspects of the data, are reported, along with considerations for future measurement waves. The CE WG ABCD® components are an essential part of the overall protocol that permits characterization of the unique cultural and social environment within which each developing brain is transactionally embedded.
