At Harvard University, before coming to Yale, Ms. Apfel studied children’s early home environment, collaboratively developing with Jean Carew and others a measure of parent and child interaction. At Yale University, Ms. Apfel joined William Kessen, Greta Fein, and Alison Clarke-Stewart in an evaluation of different models of early intervention with families of young children. Ms. Apfel was also involved in a national study called the Infant Health and Development Program. For this Stanford University-based project, which examined the effects of intervention on the development of prematurely born infants, Ms. Apfel served as evaluation coordinator for the Yale University Medical Center site.

Continuing to evaluate program effects, Ms. Apfel has been collaborating with Victoria Seitz in longitudinal studies of various educational and family support programs, including Head Start, Follow Through, the Yale Child Welfare Program, and a school-based program for pregnant and parenting teens in New Haven, Connecticut. Ms. Apfel and Ms. Seitz have been continuing an 18-year longitudinal study of school-age mothers and their children. Ms. Apfel has studied and written about the various ways families support their individual members through life transitions, with a particular interest in teen motherhood.