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Testing Comparability Between Retrospective Life History Data and Prospective Birth Cohort Study Data

Jivraj, S; Goodman, A; Ploubidis, GB; de Oliveira, C; (2017) Testing Comparability Between Retrospective Life History Data and Prospective Birth Cohort Study Data. Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences 10.1093/geronb/gbx042. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Objectives: To determine whether comparable prospective and retrospective data present the same association between childhood and life course exposures and mid-life wellbeing. Method: Prospective data is taken from the 1958 UK National Child Development Study at age 50 in 2008 and earlier sweeps (n = 8,033). Retrospective data is taken from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing at ages 50-55 from a life history interview in 2007 (n = 921). Results: There is a high degree of similarity in the direction of association between childhood exposures that have been prospectively collected in National Child Development Study and retrospectively collected in English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and wellbeing outcomes in mid-life. However, the magnitude of these associations is attenuated substantially by the inclusion of measurements, which are difficult or impossible to capture retrospectively, and are only available in prospective data, such as childhood poverty, cognitive ability, and indices of social and emotional adjustment. Discussion: The findings on the one hand provide some reassurance to the growing literature using life history data to determine life course associations with later life wellbeing. On the other hand, the findings show an overestimation in the retrospective data, in part, arising from the absence in life history data of childhood measures that are not well suited to retrospective collection.

Type: Article
Title: Testing Comparability Between Retrospective Life History Data and Prospective Birth Cohort Study Data
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbx042
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbx042
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: ELSA, Health and economic wellbeing, NCDS, Prospective data, Retrospective data
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Epidemiology and Public Health
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1554679
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