Ann C. Crouter, Ph.D.

Raymond E. and Erin Stuart Schultz Dean College of Health and Human Development The Pennsylvania State University ac1@psu.edu

Dr. Crouter studies the interconnections between parents' work, family processes, and family members' health and well-being in several research projects. With Susan McHale, she co-directs the Penn State Family Relationships Project, an NICHD-funded study of gender socialization in dual-earner families that includes a sample of European-American families who have been studied annually for 10 years (middle childhood into late adolescence) and a short-term longitudinal study of two-parent, African-American families. Dr. Crouter is also Co-PI on a companion study (directed by Kim Updegraff, Arizona State University) of gender socialization in Mexican-American families, also funded by NICHD. In all three samples, the research teams pay equal attention to mothers, fathers, and two siblings, a design that enables them to make within-family comparisons of males and females.

Dr. Crouter is also involved in a large program project with colleagues at Penn State and the University of North Carolina. Led by Dr. Lynne Vernon Feagans, the team is following 1200 families with infants in six low-income, rural counties in Pennsylvania and North Carolina from birth through age 8.

Since early 2005, Dr. Crouter has co-led a team of Penn State investigators in a multi-level study of the work-family interface in the hotel industry. Using a variety of methods-from qualitative interviews with highly placed hotel executives to daily diary studies of hotel managers and hourly employees-the Hotel Initiative hopes to capture what it is like to work in this challenging, 24/7 industry. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and NICHD's Work, Family, and Health Network, the goal of this research is to identify workplace policies and practices that could relieve stress and facilitate health and well-being of hotel employees and their families.

The theme of "transitions" threads its way throughout Dr. Crouter's work. Her longitudinal work charts development over time, including developmental transitions such as the transition from middle childhood to adolescence. Her new work will enable her to look at day-to-day transitions, including the implications of a stressful day on the job for subsequent health and well-being. She is interested in examining these issues in diverse samples and contexts.

UCLA Center for Culture & Health, 760 Westwood Plaza, Box 62, Los Angeles, CA 90024   FRC4@ucla.edu