About Us
Overview
Statement of Purpose
Due to the expanding volume of information on the Web, parents and professionals often have difficulty locating the information they want. Even when they find information that seems relevant, they have difficulty determining if it is credible. The Child & Family WebGuide describes trustworthy websites on topics of interest to parents and professionals. All the sites listed on the WebGuide have been systematically evaluated by graduate students and faculty in child development. These sites have been selected from thousands that are available on the Web, based primarily on the quality of the information they provide. The goal of the WebGuide is to give the public easy access to the best child development information on the Web.Description of the WebGuide
There are five main categories of information: family/parenting, education/learning, typical child development, health/mental health, and resources/recreation. The first four categories contain sites with research-based information. The fifth category, resources/recreation, contains sites with information about specific programs and things to do. The resources/recreation sites, which were added at the request of parents, do not contain research-based information. The WebGuide also offers an option of searching for sites that are especially relevant to a particular age group (topics by age) and it offers several features requested by parents (e.g., ask an expert sites; research news sites).History and Funding
The Child & Family WebGuide was created in April 2001, by faculty at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University and librarians at Tisch Library, also at Tufts. The Eliot-Pearson Department has a 75-year history of studying, teaching and fostering the well being of children. The Tisch Library participates in the educational and research programs of Arts, Sciences and Technology at Tufts University by facilitating access to relevant information. Funding for the collaboration between the Eliot-Pearson Department and the library was provided by a grant from the Berger Family Endowment Technology Transfer Award, from December 1999 to March 2001. Since its unveiling, the WebGuide has continued to add topics and features. From April 2001 to March 2003 the number of topics increased from 40 to 100. New features such as Ask an Expert and Research News were added in April 2003 at which time the site was completely re-designed. Simultaneously, the WebGuide staff has been engaged in research on parents' and professionals' preferences for information (e.g. topics, features and site design). The expansion and redesign of the WebGuide, as well as the research, were generously funded by a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation beginning in September 2001 and continuing today.The Society for Research in Child Development, the world's largest and pre-eminent organization of child development scholars, has supported the WebGuide since its inception. The mission statement of the Society, which calls for the dissemination of research-based information to the public, is consistent with the objectives of the WebGuide.
Navigating the WebGuide
We offer three ways to find websites:1. Go to the homepage and click on one of the five large colored boxes. These are our categories. You will be taken to a page with a list of topics. Then click on one of the topics, and you will be shown several sites. In general we recommend finding sites through the categories because of the high degree of relevance of those sites.
2. Click on index search, which is on the top menu of each page as well as on the bottom right section of the homepage and on the left sidebar of all other pages. The index search is a close second to the method described above with regard to finding relevant websites. An advantage of the index search as compared to clicking on the categories and topics is that there are more terms from which to choose (synonyms and terms related to the topics are also included).
3. Click on topics by age, which is on the top menu of each page as well as the bottom left side of the homepage and the sidebar of all other pages. Clicking on one of the ages (e.g., infants) takes you to those topics that are most relevant to that age group.
Who is the WebGuide for?
The WebGuide is an online rating and review guide for a broad range of audiences, from those familiar with the topic of child development who are seeking answers to relatively sophisticated questions, to those with minimal background who are seeking a basic understanding of a topic. Audiences that the WebGuide is intended to serve include:- parents of children from infancy to adolescence
- professionals who work with children, such as teachers, pediatricians, counselors, day care providers and others
- professionals whose work concerns children, such as government officials, social policy experts and journalists
- students studying child development -- at the high school, undergraduate and graduate level
Management and Organization of WebGuide
Executive Officers
Nancy Martland, Ph.D.Executive Director
Nancy Martland taught young children in both private and public schools in Brookline, Massachusetts for fifteen years before coming to Tufts University as a doctoral candidate in 1993. She has pursued research in the areas of special needs inclusion, urban school leadership, the use of experts in media coverage of children, and evaluation of web-based information about children, receiving her Ph.D. from Tufts University in applied child development in 2001. Dr. Martland is a cofounder of the Child & Family WebGuide.
Email: nancy.martland@tufts.edu
Fred Rothbaum, Ph.D.
Professor of Child Development, President
Fred Rothbaum is a professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. A clinical developmental psychologist, he received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1976. He is the author or more than 30 publications, almost all of which have appeared in refereed journals, as well as a book on children's emotional problems and the development of their beliefs about control. Most of Dr. Rothbaum's research is on parent-child relations, children's problem behavior and perceived control, and cultural differences in families. Dr. Rothbaum serves on the Policy and Communications Committee at the Society of Research in Child Development. He is a cofounder of the Child & Family WebGuide.
Email: fred.rothbaum@tufts.edu
Richard Lerner, Ph.D.
Professor of Child Development, Vice President
Richard M. Lerner is currently the Bergstrom Professor of Applied Developmental Science in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. A developmental psychologist, Dr. Lerner received his Ph.D. from the City University of New York in 1971. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is now a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology. Dr. Lerner has written or edited 50 books, including America's Youth in Crisis: Challenges and Options for Programs and Policies, as well as over 275 articles. He is the founding editor of both the Journal of Research on Adolescence and Applied Developmental Science. Dr. Lerner is well known for his research on the ways in which contextual and ecological change relate to human development.
Email: richard.lerner@tufts.edu
Advisory Council
David Elkind, Ph.D.Author of The Hurried Child
David Elkind is currently Professor of Child Development at Tufts University. After receiving his Ph.D. from UCLA, he was a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at Piaget's Institut d'Epistemologie Gentique in Geneva, Switzerland. Building on the theories of Jean Piaget, Dr. Elkind has done extensive research in the areas of perceptual, cognitive, and social development over the years. Elkind is a renowned author and speaker. He has written thirteen books, including The Hurried Child, All Grown Up and No Place to Go and Miseducation. He is the author of over four hundred articles and book chapters, as well as several children's stories published in Jack and Jill magazine. In addition, Dr. Elkind is a member of ten professional organizations and a consultant to state education departments, clinics, mental health centers, government agencies, and private foundations. He is a past President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Edward Zigler
Founder of Federal Head Start Program
Edward Zigler is currently Sterling Professor of Psychology at Yale University, where he also directs the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy and heads the Psychology Section of the Child Study Center. His work at Yale has included research in a variety of fields, including child development, family functioning, and psychopathology. In addition to his work at Yale, Dr. Zigler was a member of the National Planning and Steering Committee of Project Head Start and Project Follow Through, intervention programs for economically disadvantaged children. As the first Director of the Office of Child Development and Chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau in 1970, Dr. Zigler was in charge of developing and implementing many new intervention programs. Since that time, he has served on the President's Committee on Mental Retardation and chaired both the Vietnamese Children's Resettlement Advisory Group and the Fifteenth Anniversary Head Start Committee. He also headed a national committee whose work led to passing of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Dr. Zigler has written or edited 26 books and over 500 articles. He is on the editorial boards of 10 professional journals. He serves as a special consultant for the media and various private foundations, and often appears as an expert witness before many Congressional Committees.
Fred Rogers
Creator of "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood"
Fred Rogers was a member of the advisory council from the inception of the WebGuide in April 2001 until his death in February 2003. He was the creator and host of the highly acclaimed children's program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The longest running show on PBS, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood has promoted the emotional, social, and intellectual development of children for more than thirty years. Besides his efforts on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Dr. Rogers wrote dozens of books to help children understand and cope with various life issues, such as moving, dealing with parental divorce, and having an operation. He also hosted videotapes that accompanied the books. The "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Child Care Partnership," a program developed in conjunction with Rogers' show, aims to help child care providers supplement their day care curricula by providing lessons and activities that relate to episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Board of Science Advisors
A distinguished group of faculty from leading universities played a key role in developing the WebGuide Evaluation Instrument by participating in a Delphi study. The results of the Delphi formed the foundation for determining the criteria used in the Evaluation Instrument. Many of these scholars now serve as consultants regarding revisions in this central feature of the WebGuide. They are:- Ellen Bassuk, Ph.D., President, The Better Homes Fund
- Marc Bornstein, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Celia Fisher, Ph.D., Professor, Fordham University
- Stuart Hauser, M.D., Ph.D., President, Judge Baker Children's Center
- Penny Hauser-Cram, Ed.D., Professor, Boston College
- Aletha Huston, Ph.D., Professor, University of Texas at Austin
- Diane Levin, Ph.D., Professor, Wheelock College
- Kathleen McCartney, Ph.D., Professor, Harvard University
- Susan McHale, M.A., Ph.D., Professor, Penn State University
- Mary Mindess, Ed.M., Professor, Lesley College
- Gilda Morelli, Ph.D., Professor, Boston College
- Margaret Spencer, Ph.D., Professor, University of Pennsylvania
- Richard Weinberg, Ph.D., Professor, University of Minnesota
- Shepherd Zeldin, Ph.D., Professor, University of Wisconsin