Research Highlights: March 2023

A magnifying glass and a ballpoint pen rest on top of a sheet of paper with various colorful bar graphs and pie charts.

Missing school regularly can have negative effects on children’s development of academic skills. Researchers are seeking to understand how missing school impacts areas outside of academics – like relationships with classmates. A new Crane study analyzed data on absences and peer friendships from over 800 kindergarten students. Overall, classroom friendships did not seem to be influenced by chronic absenteeism. However, for children from households with less education, frequent absenteeism was related to fewer mutual friendships at school. 

Crane authors

Dr. Arya Ansari 

Qinging Yang 

Dr. Kelly Purtell 

Dr. Tzu-Jung Lin 

Dr. Laura Justice 

A study of Head Start classrooms found that strong family-teacher relationships were associated with children having a stronger approach to learning and were associated with children’s vocabulary and early math skills. 

Ohio State author(s) 

Dr. Sarah Lang 

Dr. Erin Tebben 

This study found that for children who are placed in child protective services, cognitive stimulation by their caregiver (i.e., being given toys or shared reading) was associated with higher levels of child resilience. 

Dr. Susan Yoon