Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (E-Journal)
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Additive influences of maternal and paternal body mass index on weight status trajectories from childhood to mid-adulthood in the 1970 British Cohort Study
Full text linkThis study aimed to (i) describe the weight status trajectories from childhood to mid-adulthood and (ii) investigate the influence of maternal and paternal body mass index (BMI) on offspring’s trajectories in a nationally representative study in Great Britain. The sample comprised 4174 (43%male) participants from the 1970 British Cohort Study with complete BMI data at ages 10, 26, 30, 34, and 42 years. Individuals’ weight status was categorised as overweight/obese or non-overweight/obese at each age, and trajectories of weight status from 10 to 42 years of age were assessed. Sex-stratified multinomial logistic regression models were used to assess associations of maternal and paternal BMI with trajectory group membership, adjusting for potential confounders (e.g., socioeconomic position and puberty). 30% of individuals were never overweight/obese (reference trajectory), 6%, 44% and 8% had childhood, early- and mid-adulthood onset of overweight/obesity (respectively), and 12% other trajectories. In fully adjusted models, higher maternal and paternal BMI significantly increased the risk of childhood (relative risk ratio: 1.2-1.3) and early adulthood onset (1.2) of overweight/obesity in both sexes. Relative risk ratios were generally higher for maternal than paternal BMI in females but similar in males. Early puberty also increased the risk of childhood (1.8-9.2) and early adulthood onset (3.7-4.7) of overweight/obesity. Results highlight the importance of primary prevention, as most individuals remained overweight/obese after onset. Maternal and paternal BMI had additive effects on offspring weight status trajectories across 32 years of the life course, suggesting that prevention/intervention programmes should focus on the whole family
Guest Editorial: Generation X enters middle age
Full text linkThe 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) is an ongoing longitudinal study of people born in the United Kingdom in a particular week in 1970. It is the third study in Britain’s world-renowned series of birth cohort studies, following the 1946 and 1958 birth cohorts. Compared to the generations born in 1946 and 1958, the 1970 cohort were subject to an era of economic and labour market transformation and turbulence and experienced growing socio-economic inequalities. They can be seen as entering middle age with a degree of reluctance, as child-bearing has been delayed to later ages compared to previous generations. The notion that this generation is more troubled than the previous generation gains some support from the higher levels of mental distress reported by the 1970 cohort members at age 42. This special issue asks how this generation is faring in mid-life, and addresses a diverse range of themes including social mobility, obesity and religion. This paper provides an introduction to the 1970 cohort and the social context in which they have lived, and an overview of the remaining papers in the special issue
The impact of attrition and non-response in birth cohort studies: a need to incorporate missingness strategies
Full text linkThis paper reveals the extent of attrition in the British Cohort Study begun in 1970 (BCS70) and how it affects sample composition over time. We examine the determinants of response and then construct inverse probability weights (IPWs) to adjust for sample loss. Secondly, we create a hypothetical substantive data set from BCS70 across data collection waves 3 and 4 to illustrate the effectiveness of the use of weights and multiple imputations (MI) in handling the impact of unit non-response and item missingness respectively. Our findings show that when the predictive power of the response models is weak, the efficacy of non-response weights is undermined. Further, multiple imputations are effective in reducing the bias resulting from item missingness when the magnitude of the bias is high and the imputation models are well specified
Trajectories of functional disability for the elderly in Britain
Full text linkThis study uses an innovative approach to characterise trajectories of functional disability over the final stages of the life course. We use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), an annual household survey of all adults in a representative sample of British households from 1991-2008. The analysis focuses on the sub-sample of elderly household members who were aged from 65 to 74 in any of the 18 waves of data, with a final sample of 3,671 individuals contributing a total of 13,982 person years. As in previous research, we estimate latent growth curves, but extend the standard model to incorporate a measurement model for the latent outcome variable ‘functional disability’. We identify accelerating trajectories of functional disability for a representative sample of elderly individuals separately by gender. We show that socio-occupational classification is associated with the level of initial functional disability and to a less extent the change in functional disability with age. The contribution of this paper is to explore the use of a measurement model to exploit the variation between items in discriminatory power for identifying an individual’s functional disability. Further we are able to explicitly test for temporal measurement invariance in functional disability i.e. to what extent the items consistently measure the latent variable as people age
A comparison of approaches for assessing covariate effects in latent class analysis
Full text linkMixture modelling is a commonly used technique for describing longitudinal patterns of change, often with the aim of relating the resulting trajectory membership to a set of earlier risk factors. When determining these covariate effects, a three-step approach is often preferred as it is less computationally intensive and also avoids the situation where each new covariate can influence the measurement model, thus subtly changing the outcome under study. Recent simulation work has demonstrated that estimates obtained using three-step models are likely to be biased, particular when classification quality (entropy) is poor. Using both simulated data and empirical data from a large United Kingdom(UK)-based cohort study we contrast the performance of a range of commonly used three-step techniques. Bias in parameter estimates and their precision were determined and compared to new bias-adjusted three-step methods that have recently become available. The bias-adjusted three-step procedures were markedly less biased than the simpler three-step methods. Proportional Maximum Likelihood (ML), with its complex-sampling robust estimation, suffered from negligible bias across a range of values of entropy. Whilst entropy was related to bias for all methods considered, there was evidence that class-separation for each pairwise comparison may also play an important role. Under some circumstances a standard three-step method may provide unbiased covariate effects, however on the basis of these results we would recommend the use of bias-adjusted three-step estimation over these standard methods
Work-family conflict as a predictor of common mental disorders in the 1958 British birth cohort
Full text linkThe impact of work-family conflict on common mental disorders (CMD) has been examined in cross-sectional studies. The current paper examines work-family conflict and its effect on CMD in a large nationally representative longitudinal sample. This study uses data from the 1958 British birth cohort study, a longitudinal, prospective cohort study of men and women born in a single week in 1958. At 45 years 9,297 individuals were followed up and 9,008 individuals were working. In this sample work-family conflict, sociodemographic factors and the number of hours worked were assessed at age 42 years. The Revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R) was used to assess CMD, as classified by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10), in cohort members at age 45 years. Work-family conflict was prospectively associated with an increased risk of common mental disorders (OR=1.76 95% CI 1.36-2.20) adjusting for gender, marital status, social class and educational qualifications. However there was no significant prospective association between the number of hours worked and the prevalence of CMD in this cohort. These results suggest that work-family conflict is a risk factor for future common mental disorder and that in order to prevent common mental disorder this should be considered in job planning. There is a need for more prospective studies with more detailed measures of work-family conflict to confirm these results
Zurich Longitudinal Study 'From School to Middle Adulthood'
Full text linkThe Zurich Longitudinal Study 'From School to Middle Adulthood' (ZLSE) is a longitudinal study which, to date, encompasses ten surveys from various projects. The study covers a life span from the age of 15th to the 49th year of life and started in 1978 when the participants attended their last compulsory school year; another survey is planned for spring 2015 at the age of 52. The focus lies, on the one hand, on a broad coverage of various personality dimensions supplemented by sociobiographical information in adolescence, and, on the other hand, on the professional and non-professional development from adolescence to adulthood. At this moment, data of 485 people representative of the German-speaking part of Switzerland are available. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the study and to explain in detail the individual surveys
Understandng Society Scientific Conference 2015 Abstracts
Full text linkBook of abstracts from the 2015 conference hosted by the University of Essex
