The first part of studying families and keeping them in research studies for a very long time, and I'm proud to say that all of our studies are longitudinal studies, and we have a retention rate between 86% to 90% of our families, and one study we've seen these families for 15 years. So you think about we work with families that are often characterized as difficult-to-reach families, but we're doing something to keep them in our studies.

What we do is establish a relationship with them, and we let them know that we're there not only to get information from them but to also find a way to give the information back which will have implications later for how we've translated these empirical data into actual preventive interventions.

So we will spend time in the community getting to know what we call the community liaisons or the community leaders so that they then sanction our being there. Once they sanction our being there, then they are key in our being able to get families. Even though we may identify families through a school list; we may be targeting African American children ages 10 who live in a particular area of Georgia, but in order for us to actually be able to go and enroll these children in our studies or their families, we need someone to sanction our being there. It takes time to do that, to establish rapport with the community, so it's not our establishing a relationship with families; we really have a relationship with the community.

We go to the homes of our families and actually collect data in their homes, so that it doesn't take them out of their natural environment, and you can imagine what that's like when all family members have to be at a data collection session. People have pretty complicated lives. Part of the process, the beginning process, of doing this work is establishing a relationship with the community, community leaders that then leads one to have a relationship with their families.