Pub Date : 2020-03-10DOI: 10.1332/175795920x15844303873216
H. Goldstein, G. Leckie, M. Haynes, P. Tran
The presence of randomly distributed measurement errors in scale scores such as those used in educational and behavioural assessments implies that careful adjustments are required to statistical model estimation procedures if inferences are required for ‘true’ as opposed to ‘observed’ relationships. In many cases this requires the use of external values for ‘reliability’ statistics or ‘measurement error variances’ which may be provided by a test constructor or else inferred or estimated by the data analyst. Popular measures are those described as ‘internal consistency’ estimates and sometimes other measures based on data grouping. All such measures, however, make particular assumptions that may be questionable but are often not examined. In this paper we focus on scaled scores derived from aggregating a set of indicators, and set out a general methodological framework for exploring different ways of estimating reliability statistics and measurement error variances, critiquing certain approaches and suggesting more satisfactory methods in the presence of longitudinal data. In particular, we explore the assumption of local (conditional) item response independence and show how a failure of this assumption can lead to biased estimates in statistical models using scaled scores as explanatory variables. We illustrate our methods using a large longitudinal data set of mathematics test scores from Queensland, Australia.
{"title":"Estimating reliability statistics and measurement error variances using instrumental variables with longitudinal data","authors":"H. Goldstein, G. Leckie, M. Haynes, P. Tran","doi":"10.1332/175795920x15844303873216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x15844303873216","url":null,"abstract":"The presence of randomly distributed measurement errors in scale scores such as those used in educational and behavioural assessments implies that careful adjustments are required to statistical model estimation procedures if inferences are required for ‘true’ as opposed\u0000 to ‘observed’ relationships. In many cases this requires the use of external values for ‘reliability’ statistics or ‘measurement error variances’ which may be provided by a test constructor or else inferred or estimated by the data analyst. Popular measures\u0000 are those described as ‘internal consistency’ estimates and sometimes other measures based on data grouping. All such measures, however, make particular assumptions that may be questionable but are often not examined. In this paper we focus on scaled scores derived from aggregating\u0000 a set of indicators, and set out a general methodological framework for exploring different ways of estimating reliability statistics and measurement error variances, critiquing certain approaches and suggesting more satisfactory methods in the presence of longitudinal data. In particular,\u0000 we explore the assumption of local (conditional) item response independence and show how a failure of this assumption can lead to biased estimates in statistical models using scaled scores as explanatory variables. We illustrate our methods using a large longitudinal data set of mathematics\u0000 test scores from Queensland, Australia.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45895421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795919x15659210629362
Ross Macmillan, C. Hannan
Recent decades have seen renewed attention to issues of causal inference in the social sciences, yet implications for life course research have not been spelled out nor is it clear what types of approaches are best suited for theoretical development on life course processes. We begin by evaluating a number of meta-theoretical perspectives, including critical realism, data mining and experimentation, and find them limited in their potential for causal claims in a life course context. From this, we initiate a discussion of the logic and practice of ‘natural experiments’ for life course research, highlighting issues of how to identify natural experiments, how to use cohort information and variation in the order and timing of life course transitions to isolate variation in exposure, how such events that alter social structures are the key to identification in causal processes of the life course and, finally, of analytic strategies for the extraction of causal conclusions from conventional statistical estimates. Through discussion of both positive and negative examples, we outline the key methodological issues in play and provide a road map of best practices. While we acknowledge that causal claims are not necessary for social explanation, our goal is to explain how causal inference can benefit life course scholarship and outline a set of practices that can complement conventional approaches in the pursuit of causal explanation in life course research.
{"title":"Causality in life course research: the potential use of ‘natural experiments’ for causal inference","authors":"Ross Macmillan, C. Hannan","doi":"10.1332/175795919x15659210629362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795919x15659210629362","url":null,"abstract":"Recent decades have seen renewed attention to issues of causal inference in the social sciences, yet implications for life course research have not been spelled out nor is it clear what types of approaches are best suited for theoretical development on life course processes. We begin by evaluating a number of meta-theoretical perspectives, including critical realism, data mining and experimentation, and find them limited in their potential for causal claims in a life course context. From this, we initiate a discussion of the logic and practice of ‘natural experiments’ for life course research, highlighting issues of how to identify natural experiments, how to use cohort information and variation in the order and timing of life course transitions to isolate variation in exposure, how such events that alter social structures are the key to identification in causal processes of the life course and, finally, of analytic strategies for the extraction of causal conclusions from conventional statistical estimates. Through discussion of both positive and negative examples, we outline the key methodological issues in play and provide a road map of best practices. While we acknowledge that causal claims are not necessary for social explanation, our goal is to explain how causal inference can benefit life course scholarship and outline a set of practices that can complement conventional approaches in the pursuit of causal explanation in life course research.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"7-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66288921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795919x15735210172319
H. Joshi
{"title":"Causation and association from grave to cradle","authors":"H. Joshi","doi":"10.1332/175795919x15735210172319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795919x15735210172319","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/175795919x15735210172319","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45328357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16040851984946
B. Hollstein
This commentary focuses on promises and pitfalls of qualitative longitudinal research (QLR). Longitudinal data on practices, perspectives, individual relevancies and experiences can be particularly advantageous for life course, social policy and health research. However, the complexity of QLR carries certain downsides, dilemmas and trade-offs. The commentary discusses implications of different qualitative methods for the investigation of stability and change, the tensions between flexibility and comparability, and challenges related to sampling and the explanatory power of QLR.It is argued that the choices of methods for data collection and data analysis have stark implications for what can be determined as change and stability across time. In addition, several ways of ensuring comparability across time are described. Finally, sampling strategies are outlined that aim to achieve and maintain heterogeneity of cases.As standards of good practice, the author advocates more thorough documentation of the methods of data collection, sampling and data analysis employed in QLR studies, along with a better description of instruments and how they are applied.
{"title":"Promises and pitfalls of qualitative longitudinal research","authors":"B. Hollstein","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16040851984946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16040851984946","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary focuses on promises and pitfalls of qualitative longitudinal research (QLR). Longitudinal data on practices, perspectives, individual relevancies and experiences can be particularly advantageous for life course, social policy and health research. However, the complexity of QLR carries certain downsides, dilemmas and trade-offs. The commentary discusses implications of different qualitative methods for the investigation of stability and change, the tensions between flexibility and comparability, and challenges related to sampling and the explanatory power of QLR.It is argued that the choices of methods for data collection and data analysis have stark implications for what can be determined as change and stability across time. In addition, several ways of ensuring comparability across time are described. Finally, sampling strategies are outlined that aim to achieve and maintain heterogeneity of cases.As standards of good practice, the author advocates more thorough documentation of the methods of data collection, sampling and data analysis employed in QLR studies, along with a better description of instruments and how they are applied.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66289552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16034769228656
Benita Combet, Daniel Oesch
A large literature shows that families with more resources are able to provide better learning environments and make more ambitious educational choices for their children. At the end of compulsory education, the result is a social-origin gap in school-track attendance and learning outcomes. Our paper analyses whether this gap further widens thereafter for children with comparable school achievement, and whether the gap varies by gender and migrant status. We examine graduation rates from higher education by combining a cohort study from Switzerland with a reweighting method to match students on their school track, grades, reading literacy and place of residence at the end of compulsory school. The one observed feature that sets them apart is their parents’ socio-economic status. When analysing their graduation rates 14 years later at the age of 30, we find a large social-origin gap. The rate of university completion at age 30 is 20 percentage points higher among students from the highest socio-economic status quartile than among students from the lowest quartile, even though their school abilities were comparable at age 16. This gap appears to be somewhat smaller among women than men, and among natives than migrants, but differences are not statistically significant. For men and women, migrants and natives alike, abundant parental resources strongly increase the likelihood of university graduation in Switzerland.
{"title":"The social-origin gap in university graduation by gender and immigrant status: a cohort analysis for Switzerland","authors":"Benita Combet, Daniel Oesch","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16034769228656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16034769228656","url":null,"abstract":"A large literature shows that families with more resources are able to provide better learning environments and make more ambitious educational choices for their children. At the end of compulsory education, the result is a social-origin gap in school-track attendance and learning outcomes. Our paper analyses whether this gap further widens thereafter for children with comparable school achievement, and whether the gap varies by gender and migrant status. We examine graduation rates from higher education by combining a cohort study from Switzerland with a reweighting method to match students on their school track, grades, reading literacy and place of residence at the end of compulsory school. The one observed feature that sets them apart is their parents’ socio-economic status. When analysing their graduation rates 14 years later at the age of 30, we find a large social-origin gap. The rate of university completion at age 30 is 20 percentage points higher among students from the highest socio-economic status quartile than among students from the lowest quartile, even though their school abilities were comparable at age 16. This gap appears to be somewhat smaller among women than men, and among natives than migrants, but differences are not statistically significant. For men and women, migrants and natives alike, abundant parental resources strongly increase the likelihood of university graduation in Switzerland.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66290011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16000977636901
P. Otáhal, L. Blizzard, D. Hosmer, J. Stankovich, A. Venn
Attrition is common in longitudinal studies and can lead to bias when the missingness pattern affects the distributions of analysed variables. Characterisation of factors predictive of attrition is vital to longitudinal research. Few studies have investigated the factors predictive of attrition from childhood cohorts with large-scale loss to follow-up. Methods to remove potential bias are available and have been well studied in scenarios of short intervening periods between contact and follow-up. Less is known about the performance of such techniques when there is a large initial loss of participants after a long intervening period. The Australian Schools Health and Fitness Survey (ASHFS) was conducted in 1985 when participants were school children aged 7–15 years. The first follow-up occurred 20 years later with substantial loss of participants: 80% were traced, 61% enrolled and provided brief questionnaire information, 47% provided more extensive questionnaire information and 28% attended clinics. Factors associated with attrition were examined and two common techniques, multiple imputation (MI) and inverse probability weighting (IPW) were used to determine the potential for correcting the bias in the estimate of the association between self-rated fitness and BMI in childhood. Attrition from childhood to adulthood was found to be influenced by the same factors that operate in adult cohorts: lower education, lower socio-economic position and male sex. Attrition patterns varied by the stage of follow-up. Estimated childhood associations biased by adulthood attrition were able to be corrected using MI, but IPW was unsuccessful due to a lack of completely observed informative variables.
{"title":"Characterising attrition from childhood to adulthood in a 20-year cohort: which baseline factors are influential, and can bias be corrected?","authors":"P. Otáhal, L. Blizzard, D. Hosmer, J. Stankovich, A. Venn","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16000977636901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16000977636901","url":null,"abstract":"Attrition is common in longitudinal studies and can lead to bias when the missingness pattern affects the distributions of analysed variables. Characterisation of factors predictive of attrition is vital to longitudinal research. Few studies have investigated the factors predictive of attrition from childhood cohorts with large-scale loss to follow-up. Methods to remove potential bias are available and have been well studied in scenarios of short intervening periods between contact and follow-up. Less is known about the performance of such techniques when there is a large initial loss of participants after a long intervening period. The Australian Schools Health and Fitness Survey (ASHFS) was conducted in 1985 when participants were school children aged 7–15 years. The first follow-up occurred 20 years later with substantial loss of participants: 80% were traced, 61% enrolled and provided brief questionnaire information, 47% provided more extensive questionnaire information and 28% attended clinics. Factors associated with attrition were examined and two common techniques, multiple imputation (MI) and inverse probability weighting (IPW) were used to determine the potential for correcting the bias in the estimate of the association between self-rated fitness and BMI in childhood. Attrition from childhood to adulthood was found to be influenced by the same factors that operate in adult cohorts: lower education, lower socio-economic position and male sex. Attrition patterns varied by the stage of follow-up. Estimated childhood associations biased by adulthood attrition were able to be corrected using MI, but IPW was unsuccessful due to a lack of completely observed informative variables.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66289622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16015782777176
Ariane Basler, Irene Kriesi, Christian Imdorf
Gender-typical educational and occupational goals are an important precursor of educational gender segregation and unequal opportunities of men and women in the labour market. However, little is known about how gender-typical aspirations develop during childhood and adolescence. Drawing on identity and opportunity arguments from a developmental perspective, this paper attempts to fill this gap by examining whether and to what extent gender-typical aspirations change during adolescence and how track allocation in secondary school is related to the development of gendered occupational aspirations between the ages of 15 and 21. The analyses are based on the Swiss Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. They include an observation span of six years, during which respondents were surveyed at the ages of 15, 16, 18 and 21.The findings show that gender-typical occupational aspirations were most prevalent at the age of 15. Their level and development differed by upper-secondary school track and gender. Young men’s aspirations were considerably more gender-typical than those of young women. Aspirations became less gender-typical for women in baccalaureate school and in initial vocational education and training programmes with high academic requirements and, in particular, for young men who entered vocational education and training with low requirements. Overall, our results support the assumption that changes in gender-typical aspirations during adolescence are the result of an interplay between opportunity structures offered by the upper-secondary school track, identity and status considerations.
{"title":"The development of gendered occupational aspirations across adolescence: examining the role of different types of upper-secondary education","authors":"Ariane Basler, Irene Kriesi, Christian Imdorf","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16015782777176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16015782777176","url":null,"abstract":"Gender-typical educational and occupational goals are an important precursor of educational gender segregation and unequal opportunities of men and women in the labour market. However, little is known about how gender-typical aspirations develop during childhood and adolescence. Drawing on identity and opportunity arguments from a developmental perspective, this paper attempts to fill this gap by examining whether and to what extent gender-typical aspirations change during adolescence and how track allocation in secondary school is related to the development of gendered occupational aspirations between the ages of 15 and 21. The analyses are based on the Swiss Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. They include an observation span of six years, during which respondents were surveyed at the ages of 15, 16, 18 and 21.The findings show that gender-typical occupational aspirations were most prevalent at the age of 15. Their level and development differed by upper-secondary school track and gender. Young men’s aspirations were considerably more gender-typical than those of young women. Aspirations became less gender-typical for women in baccalaureate school and in initial vocational education and training programmes with high academic requirements and, in particular, for young men who entered vocational education and training with low requirements. Overall, our results support the assumption that changes in gender-typical aspirations during adolescence are the result of an interplay between opportunity structures offered by the upper-secondary school track, identity and status considerations.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66289778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16025975665508
Steven A. Haas, Zhangjun Zhou, Katsuya Oi
Social gradients in health have been a focus of research for decades. Two important lines of social gradient research have examined (1) international variation in their magnitude and (2) their life course / developmental antecedents. The present study brings these two strands together to explore the developmental origins of educational gradients in health. We leverage data spanning 14 high-income contexts from the Health and Retirement Study and its sisters in Europe. We find that early-life health and socio-economic status consistently attenuate educational gradients in multimorbidity and functional limitation. However, the relative contribution of early-life factors to gradients varies substantially across contexts. The results suggest that research on social gradients, and population health broadly, would benefit from the unique insights available from a conceptual and empirical approach that integrates comparative and life course perspectives.
{"title":"What role for the ‘long arm of childhood’ in social gradients in health? An international comparison of high-income contexts","authors":"Steven A. Haas, Zhangjun Zhou, Katsuya Oi","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16025975665508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16025975665508","url":null,"abstract":"Social gradients in health have been a focus of research for decades. Two important lines of social gradient research have examined (1) international variation in their magnitude and (2) their life course / developmental antecedents. The present study brings these two strands together to explore the developmental origins of educational gradients in health. We leverage data spanning 14 high-income contexts from the Health and Retirement Study and its sisters in Europe. We find that early-life health and socio-economic status consistently attenuate educational gradients in multimorbidity and functional limitation. However, the relative contribution of early-life factors to gradients varies substantially across contexts. The results suggest that research on social gradients, and population health broadly, would benefit from the unique insights available from a conceptual and empirical approach that integrates comparative and life course perspectives.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66289846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795920x16032960406152
L. Bernardi, Núria Sánchez‐Mira
The combination of qualitative approaches and longitudinal research designs is a powerful way to explore changes in individual life courses as they occur. While qualitative research is mostly associated with retrospective studies that analyse lives ‘backwards’ in time, prospective qualitative studies that track lives as they unfold have grown in popularity over the past two decades. Their increased importance goes hand in hand with the growing attention in the social sciences to process and change versus stability and continuity through time. Prospective qualitative studies are uniquely suited to analysing continuity and change in people’s lives, offering a complex understanding of critical junctures, transitions and gradual, non-linear or contradictory processes of change as they are interpreted and revisited by individuals with the unfolding of their lives. With its intrinsic focus on time and temporalities, prospective qualitative research allows us to address not only changing meanings and perceptions, but how people examine their pasts and look into their futures, and how these temporal perspectives are modified along with life events and transitions. Together with its undoubted advantages, a range of analytical and methodological challenges arise in the process of engaging with participants in a prospective qualitative study, where time, lives, perceptions and meanings are continually shifting and under revision. The benefits of combining prospective and retrospective insights and meanings involve a complex and demanding analytical effort that addresses potentially emerging discrepancies in the reporting of the same event or transition. The notion of a linear temporality that structures social action needs to be reconciled with narratives that reflect the fluidity of past and future time, stagnation, zigzag or even reversible developments. Questions of archiving are a source of concern for researchers whose data sets are iteratively generated over time, raising issues about consent, anonymity and ownership. Ethical issues also sharpen as the level of personal involvement between researcher and participant increases with repeated interactions across the different waves. With the increased availability of qualitative prospective studies, there is a growing agreement about the benefits of using secondary data. Arguments about research costs and underexploitation of existing data are gaining ground against the traditional reluctance of qualitative researchers to make their data available for reuse. There is, hence, an emerging need to reflect on the strategies and practices of data creation and management for long-term storage and use by others. In parallel, challenges of combining different data sources with similar foci for analytical and comparative purposes are increasingly recognised. These are just a few of the challenges facing prospective qualitative researchers, but they clearly point to the need for further methodological reflection
{"title":"Introduction to the special issue: Prospective qualitative research: new directions, opportunities and challenges","authors":"L. Bernardi, Núria Sánchez‐Mira","doi":"10.1332/175795920x16032960406152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795920x16032960406152","url":null,"abstract":"The combination of qualitative approaches and longitudinal research designs is a powerful way to explore changes in individual life courses as they occur. While qualitative research is mostly associated with retrospective studies that analyse lives ‘backwards’ in time, prospective qualitative studies that track lives as they unfold have grown in popularity over the past two decades. Their increased importance goes hand in hand with the growing attention in the social sciences to process and change versus stability and continuity through time. Prospective qualitative studies are uniquely suited to analysing continuity and change in people’s lives, offering a complex understanding of critical junctures, transitions and gradual, non-linear or contradictory processes of change as they are interpreted and revisited by individuals with the unfolding of their lives. With its intrinsic focus on time and temporalities, prospective qualitative research allows us to address not only changing meanings and perceptions, but how people examine their pasts and look into their futures, and how these temporal perspectives are modified along with life events and transitions. Together with its undoubted advantages, a range of analytical and methodological challenges arise in the process of engaging with participants in a prospective qualitative study, where time, lives, perceptions and meanings are continually shifting and under revision. The benefits of combining prospective and retrospective insights and meanings involve a complex and demanding analytical effort that addresses potentially emerging discrepancies in the reporting of the same event or transition. The notion of a linear temporality that structures social action needs to be reconciled with narratives that reflect the fluidity of past and future time, stagnation, zigzag or even reversible developments. Questions of archiving are a source of concern for researchers whose data sets are iteratively generated over time, raising issues about consent, anonymity and ownership. Ethical issues also sharpen as the level of personal involvement between researcher and participant increases with repeated interactions across the different waves. With the increased availability of qualitative prospective studies, there is a growing agreement about the benefits of using secondary data. Arguments about research costs and underexploitation of existing data are gaining ground against the traditional reluctance of qualitative researchers to make their data available for reuse. There is, hence, an emerging need to reflect on the strategies and practices of data creation and management for long-term storage and use by others. In parallel, challenges of combining different data sources with similar foci for analytical and comparative purposes are increasingly recognised. These are just a few of the challenges facing prospective qualitative researchers, but they clearly point to the need for further methodological reflection","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66289953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/175795919x15719917311075
Yi Lu, A. Pearce, Leah Li
Height growth is an important biomarker for early life exposures that influence later disease risk. Previous studies show that ethnic minority children in the UK tend to be born lighter but experience more rapid infancy growth than White peers. However, whether subsequent child-to-adolescent growth differs by ethnic group is insufficiently understood. We used the data from 15,239 singletons in the UK Millennium Cohort Study and applied mixed-effects cubic growth models to examine ethnic differences in height trajectories between 3y and 14y. Models were subsequently adjusted for potential early life explanatory factors. Compared with White counterparts, South Asian children had lower birthweight and shorter parents on average, but were slightly taller at 3y by 0.5cm [95% CI: 0.2–0.9] and had comparable childhood and adolescent trajectories, except that girls had a slower growth in adolescence. Height of South Asians relative to White children increased after adjusting for birthweight (taller by 1.3cm at 3y). Black African/Caribbeans were taller than White children at all ages between 3y and 14y (at 3y boys: 2.2cm, 1.2–2.7; girls: 3.2cm, 2.6–3.8) with height differences widening in childhood and reducing in adolescence. Adjustment for potential explanatory factors did not alter these differences. Despite having lower birthweight, contemporary UK South Asian children had comparable child-to-adolescent growth as White children. Black African/Caribbeans were considerably taller than other ethnic groups. Future research is needed in understanding the role of genetic and other environmental factors (such as diet) in these distinct growth patterns across ethnic groups and their health implications.
{"title":"Ethnic differences in height growth trajectories and early life factors: findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study","authors":"Yi Lu, A. Pearce, Leah Li","doi":"10.1332/175795919x15719917311075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/175795919x15719917311075","url":null,"abstract":"Height growth is an important biomarker for early life exposures that influence later disease risk. Previous studies show that ethnic minority children in the UK tend to be born lighter but experience more rapid infancy growth than White peers. However, whether subsequent child-to-adolescent\u0000 growth differs by ethnic group is insufficiently understood. We used the data from 15,239 singletons in the UK Millennium Cohort Study and applied mixed-effects cubic growth models to examine ethnic differences in height trajectories between 3y and 14y. Models were subsequently adjusted for\u0000 potential early life explanatory factors. Compared with White counterparts, South Asian children had lower birthweight and shorter parents on average, but were slightly taller at 3y by 0.5cm [95% CI: 0.2–0.9] and had comparable childhood and adolescent trajectories, except that girls\u0000 had a slower growth in adolescence. Height of South Asians relative to White children increased after adjusting for birthweight (taller by 1.3cm at 3y). Black African/Caribbeans were taller than White children at all ages between 3y and 14y (at 3y boys: 2.2cm, 1.2–2.7; girls: 3.2cm,\u0000 2.6–3.8) with height differences widening in childhood and reducing in adolescence. Adjustment for potential explanatory factors did not alter these differences. Despite having lower birthweight, contemporary UK South Asian children had comparable child-to-adolescent growth as White\u0000 children. Black African/Caribbeans were considerably taller than other ethnic groups. Future research is needed in understanding the role of genetic and other environmental factors (such as diet) in these distinct growth patterns across ethnic groups and their health implications.","PeriodicalId":45988,"journal":{"name":"Longitudinal and Life Course Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43155453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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