The challenges inherent in studying genetics should not discourage the social scientist from embarking on this area of research, as the potential for moving both fields forward by taking advantage of the knowledge base of each is too great. Our experience with these interdisciplinary collaborations is that they end up being rewarding, educational, and beneficial to all involved – and that they result in exciting research advances! As one example, some years back, the Principle Investigators on the Child Development project (Drs. Jack Bates, Ken Dodge, and Greg Pettit) approached Danielle M. Dick about adding a genetic component to their on-going longitudinal study of >500 children, first assessed as they entered kindergarten, with >20 years of developmental data. The project's guiding model of developmental process was that children's biological dispositions, cultural contexts, life experiences, and characteristic social cognitions transactionally combine to influence a variety of behavioral outcomes, making it a natural extension of the project to add genotypic data. The rich, longitudinal assessments of the Child Development Project (CDP) offered special advantages for studying the pathways by which genetic factors
