Research Interests

Family Demography, Life Course and Human Development, Gender, Education, Sexual behavior, race, and gender.

Research with AHAA

Family structure history, female pubertal development, and academic status during high school.

Cavanagh is currently working on two projects that make use of the AHAA transcript data. The first, "Marital Transitions, Parenting, and Schooling: Exploring the Linkage between Family Structure History and Adolescents' Academic Status", coauthored with Schiller and Riegle-Crumb, investigates how family structure, measured retrospectively across the adolescent's early life course, shapes adolescents' academic careers during the transition into and out of high school. We found that family structure at birth is associated with students' academic status at the start of high school and that family structure instability, measured as the number of changes in the resident parent's marital trajectory, distinguished those with the academic credentials needed to attend college from other high school graduates and from those who dropped out of high school. This paper is under review at Sociology of Education.

The second project, coauthored with Riegle-Crumb, investigates how early pubertal timing influences girls' academic risk, both during early adolescence and beyond. The biosocial linkage between early pubertal timing and girls' problem behaviors is well-established but how early pubertal timing affects girls' academic careers is less clear. Using GPAs and failure indexes from the transcript data, we find that the academic disruption related to early pubertal timing in 9th grade resulted in cumulative disadvantages in girls' academic attainment by the end of high school. We will present these findings at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in August.

Publications and Presentations

Cavanagh, Shannon E. 2004. The Sexual Debut of Girls in Early Adolescence: The Intersection of Race, Pubertal Timing, and Friendship Group Dynamics. Journal of Research on Adolescence 14: 285-312.

Crosnoe, Robert, Shannon E. Cavanagh, and Glen H. Elder, Jr. 2003. Adolescent Friendships as Academic Resources: The Intersection of Social Relationships, Social Structure, and Institutional Context. Sociological Perspectives 3: 331-352.

Harris, Kathleen Mullan and Shannon E. Cavanagh. (in press). Indicators of the Peer Environment in Adolescence. In Brett B. Brown (Ed.) Key Indicators of Children's Well-Being: Completing the Picture. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cavanagh, Shannon E. and Aletha Huston. The Interplay of Family Instability, Structure, and Context and its Role in Children's Early Socio-Emotional Adjustment. Social Forces (r&r)

Cavanagh, Shannon E. From Structure to Process: Family Structure History, Parenting, Peers, and Adolescent Wellbeing. Journal of Marriage and Family. (r&r)

Cavanagh, Shannon E., Kathryn Schiller, and Catherine Riegle-Crumb. Marital Transitions, Parenting, and Schooling: Exploring the Linkage between Family Structure History and Adolescents' Academic Status. Sociology of Education. (r&r)

Cavanagh, Shannon E. Drinking as a Product of Assimilation: Immigration from Mexico, Peer Networks, and Adolescent Alcohol Use. Sociological Perspectives

Discussant, Adolescent Risky Behaviors. PAA, Philadelphia, PA: March 2005.

The Interplay of Family Instability, Structure, and Context and its Role in Children's Early Socio-Emotional Adjustment. Presented at the Annual Meetings of PAA, Philadelphia, PA: March 2005 and Biannual Meetings of the SRCD, Atlanta, GA: April 2005.

Marital Transitions, Parenting, and Schooling: Exploring the Linkage between Family Structure History and Adolescents' Academic Status. Presented at the Annual Meetings of ASA, San Francisco, CA: August 2004.

Social Context and Adolescent Well-being: The Interplay of the Family and the Adolescent Friendship Group. Presented at the Annual Meetings of the ASA, Atlanta, GA: August 2003.

Awards and Honors

2004-2007 Individual National Research Service Award, National Institute of Child and Human Development, "Family structure change and socio-emotional well-being across the early life course." Funding period: 01/05/04 -01/05/08 ($131,340).

2002-2003 Youth and Adolescent Dissertation Award, The Henry A. Murray Research
Center, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University ($3500).

1999-2002 National Research Service Award, National Institute of Child and Human
Development, Predoctoral Traineeship, Carolina Population Center, UNC ($16,000/year).

Extracurricular Interests

Spending time with my husband and children.

Links

Curriculum Vitae
Shannon Cavanagh's PRC Webpage