Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (E-Journal)
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Associations between children’s behavioural and emotional development and objectively measured physical activity and sedentary time: Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study
Full text linkPhysical activity (PA) can have a positive influence on mental health. Less is known about the influence of mental health on recent and later PA and sedentariness in childhood. This study investigated cross-sectional and distal associations between behavioural and emotional development, and objectively-measured moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and sedentary time, in seven-year-old children participating in the Millennium Cohort Study (n = 6497). Markers of behavioural/emotional development (scores for total difficulties, internalising and externalising problems) were obtained using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at ages three, five and seven years. Associations between sedentary time or MVPA (outcomes) and behavioural/emotional development (exposures) were analysed using median regressions, stratified by sex. In cross-sectional analyses, boys’ sedentary time decreased with higher total difficulties scores (-1.1 minutes/day per score unit), boys’ and girls’ sedentary time decreased with higher externalising scores (-2.3 minutes/day per unit), and girls with higher internalising scores were more sedentary (1.4 minutes/day per unit). In analyses of MVPA, boys and girls were marginally more active with higher externalising scores (0.4 and 0.5 minutes/day per unit), and boys were less active for higher internalising scores (-0.7 minutes/day per unit). Distal associations showed similar patterns: children with increasing total difficulty and externalising scores at all ages were less sedentary at age seven; girls with increasing internalising scores more so. Boys and girls with increasing externalising scores were more active at age seven, whilst increasing internalising problems reduced MVPA for boys. In conclusion, behavioural behavioural/emotional development is associated with mid-childhood sedentary time and, more weakly, MVPA
Housing policies and their relationship to residential moves for families with young children
No full textResidential mobility (or ‘moving home’) is a common and often desired occurrence for families with young children. Many seek upward moves, to homes that better suit expanding households and areas that are deemed good for children. Families will seek to avoid ‘disadvantaging moves’ (those which are involuntary, frequent or which take them to less good housing or neighbourhoods), although much less attention is given to these kinds of moves in the housing policy literature. In this paper, I explore how advantaging moves could be facilitated and disadvantaging ones minimized, through housing policy. Drawing on a review of policy in the UK since 1980 and particularly in England since 2010, I develop a schema for considering kinds of policies that might impact on different kinds of moves for families in different housing tenures, as well as looking at the ways in which policies not explicitly designed to impact on mobility might nevertheless have this effect. This provides a framework for policy development and evaluation which should be applicable in different national contexts.
GUEST EDITORIAL - Residential mobility and wellbeing: exploring children’s living situations and their implications for housing policy
Full text linkAn introduction to this special issue on home moves and child wellbeing
Editorial
Full text linkThe journal is now in its 21st issue, with 134 papers published since the first edition and an increased publication output from three to four issues per year since 2015. The publication of the 22nd issue in April 2016 is therefore a good time to review progress
Handling attrition and non-response in longitudinal data with an application to a study of Australian youth
Full text linkA standard concern with long term longitudinal studies is that of attrition over time. Together with initial non-response this typically leads to biased model estimates unless a suitable form of adjustment is carried out. The standard approach to this has been to compute weights based upon the propensity to respond and to drop out and then carry out weighted analyses to compensate for response bias.In the present paper we argue that this approach is statistically inefficient, because it drops incomplete data records, is inflexible, and in practice gives rise to undue complexity involving a proliferation of weighting systems for different analyses. Instead we set out an alternative approach that makes use of recently developed imputation procedures for handling missing data and show how this can be used to improve the quality of the statistical analysis. An example analysis is given using the Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth (LSAY).
Home moves and child wellbeing in the first five years of life in the United States
Full text linkBy the time they are five years old, nearly 70% of children in the United States have moved home, with a substantial minority moving more than once. These early years are important for children’s later learning and development. Yet, there are a limited number of studies of residential mobility’s impact on young children. The literature indicates the importance of stressful family events, unstable housing, economic hardship, and neighbourhood conditions for residential mobility and child wellbeing. But research seldom examines the impact of these dimensions simultaneously. We used data from the first four waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to analyse precursors of residential mobility and the association of residential mobility with child behavior (N=2,511) and cognitive capabilities (N=2,033) at age five. Using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE), we find that the frequency of moving is explained by a range of stressful circumstances, including lack of parental employment, partnership transitions, paternal incarceration, unstable housing tenure, and financial hardship. These circumstances are associated with increased likelihood of moving home even when other family and neighbourhood conditions are controlled, suggesting that moving is part of a constellation of events and changes experienced by young children. Using OLS regression models we find that, for young children, the circumstances associated with moving residence appear to be more consequential for child wellbeing than does moving itself, even when children experience multiple moves.
Measuring the impact of residential mobility on response: evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study
No full textThis paper examines the relationship between residential mobility and unit non-response in the first five waves of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The objective is to ascertain whether home moves affect the likelihood of response and whether any impact persists over time. The existing literature is extended by examining the impact of moving home on the likelihood of returning to the survey after dropping out in a previous wave. The findings show that by the fifth wave of MCS more than two thirds of respondents had experienced at least one home move, with most moves happening before wave 2. Residential mobility is found to have a negative impact on subsequent response, even though this impact does not persist over time. Put differently, moving home is circumstantial and movers are likely to come back to the survey after being absent in a previous wave. The findings also shed light on the importance of tracing home movers in order to maintain the sample representativeness in a long-term longitudinal survey
“You are our eyes and ears”: A new tool for observing parent-child interactions in large samples
Full text linkDifferences in parent-child interactions have implications for a range of developmental outcomes, yet it has traditionally been difficult for large cohort studies that traverse multiple domains to include such detailed behavioural observations. We describe a new method for observing parent-child interactions specifically designed to be a component of a more comprehensive collection of data about child health and development. Participants were mothers and their two-year-old children who were part of the Growing Up in New Zealand study. During a series of brief, structured parent-child conversation tasks, observers were trained to rate mothers’ warmth, use of open-ended questions, talk about emotions and ‘linking’ talk, children’s emotional expression and mothers’ overall use of discipline. Reliability was established before and reviewed mid-way through the one-year data collection wave. We observed differences in parent-child interaction construct ratings as a function of socio-demographic variables, ethnicity and child gender that were in agreement with published research. Inter-scale correlations and correlations between observer ratings and maternal self-report measures provide preliminary evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Specifically, higher maternal self-reported affiliation and more frequent book reading were significantly correlated with observer ratings of maternal warmth, maternal language style and children’s emotional expression, and negatively correlated with observer ratings of maternal discipline. Higher maternal self-reported parenting hostility was negatively correlated with observed maternal warmth and language and positively correlated with observed maternal discipline. This observational method is a potentially useful technique for obtaining independent measures of parent-child interactions during the preschool years within large cohort studies