Yoshikawa Appointed Chair of Committee on the Science of Research on Families

Professor Hirokazu Yoshikawa recently was appointed chair of a new committee for the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council Board on Children, Youth, and Families. The Committee on the Science of Research on Families will review relevant research studies that illustrate family characteristics -- such as family structure, processes, relationships, and experiences -- that affect children's health and development.

"I am excited to serve as a chair of this committee, which will consider the benefits of multiple and mixed methods in the science of family research," Yoshikawa says. "The implications of multiple methods, particularly quantitative and qualitative, but also encompassing a wider range of methods including bio-behavioral, for advances in research on families and children are profound and have developed rapidly in recent years. This committee will review cutting-edge approaches to these methods, and draw implications for training in the disciplines that conduct family research, across the educational, social and health sciences."

Yoshikawa's book, Toward Positive Youth Development Transforming Schools and Community Programs, was also honored recently by being named the 2010 recipient of the Social Policy Edited Book Award presented by the Society for Research in Adolescence. The award recognizes exemplifying research on adolescence with implications for social policy. Yoshikawa will receive the award with coauthor Marybeth Shinn on Friday, March 12, at the SRA Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony in Philadelphia.

Yoshikawa is a developmental and community psychologist who conducts research on the development of young children in immigrant families, and the effects of public policies (particularly antipoverty policies and early childhood intervention) on children's development. Currently, he is examining how public policies, parental employment, and transnational contexts influence very young children's development in Chinese, Mexican, Dominican, and African American families.