Frontiers of research on children, youth, and families: Initiative recognizes young and mid-career scholars

Abstract

The social and behavioral sciences are becoming more recognized, with federal research budgets increasing substantially over prior years. They are also experiencing a period of rapid expansion, with prior boundaries between disciplines, between basic and applied research, and between various levels of analysis ranging from the neurological to the community, being seriously reassessed and reformulated. The questions being asked by social and behavioral scientists are increasingly ambitious, focusing, for example, on the big social questions of race relations, the role of technology, and precursors of violence and conflict, and often involving multi-investigator, large-scale investigations. At the same time, critical questions about the readiness of the field to support and sustain social and behavioral research, effective strategies and mechanisms for communicating this research to the public, and the preparation of the next generation of scientists are the subjects of debate. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.