The Children's Environments Research Group (CERG), provides an important link between university scholarship and the development of policies, environments and programs that fulfill children’s' rights and improve the quality of their lives. CERG has two major overlapping strands of work. The first is a focus on the planning, design and management of children’s physical environments. The second is a broader concern with fulfilling the rights of children, sometimes without a specific focus on the physical environment, such as our work on the development of parent’s and children’s understanding of children’s rights and of children’s experience with violence.

We are concerned with both the fundamental building of theory and research on the ecology of their everyday lives and their development and with the practical application of research in the form of policy development, programming and evaluation. We are particularly interested in supporting the efforts of low-income communities. CERG continues to carry out research in New York City but increasingly its members collaborate with international children's agencies, in particular UNICEF and the Save the Children Alliance, in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

CERG is a branch of the Center for Human Environments and collaborates closely with the other branches of this research center. Most of its members are drawn from the Ph.D. Program in Psychology. CERG is also an active partner in "Childwatch", an international network of child rights research organizations.