Alison Park.
Earlier this year the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) launched its Longitudinal Studies Strategic Review – commissioned to assess the value and future needs of longitudinal research in the UK.
The review clearly recognised the importance of the UK’s portfolio of longitudinal studies, highlighting some of the key insights that have been realised through research using their data. It also rightly asked questions about how we can best promote the use of longitudinal data, and what training and capacity building can best help ensure that these valuable resources get used as much as possible.
The review recognised that, although individual studies can (and do) do a great deal to help their data users, there is considerable value in resources that apply to a range of longitudinal studies rather than just one.
This is an area we have been working hard on at CLOSER, a centre at the IOE that brings together eight world-leading longitudinal studies. We could see that, although there is existing provision for more experienced students and researchers, there is little available for those who are new to the studies. So we have focused our efforts on materials aimed at this group – which includes students early in their studies or researchers outside academia.

These discussions led us to develop CLOSER’s Learning Hub. The Hub provides (more…)

 
Heather Joshi. 
While personal stories contain a depth of detail that cannot be collected on a grand scale, statistical evidence provides the background against which exceptional cases can be seen in wider perspective. BBC2’s ‘Generation Gifted’ documentary series is following six teenagers, selected at age 13 as having exceptional promise despite exceptionally difficult home backgrounds. The intention is to follow them until they are at least 16 and take their GCSEs.
The series not only shines a spotlight on the obstacles to social mobility, but it also helps illustrate a reason for having large-scale longitudinal studies, such as those within the CLOSER consortium. These have been a major source of evidence on the inequality of life chances between children born to rich and poor parents. They put numbers to the extent of social mobility (more…)

Rob Davies is Public Affairs Manager for CLOSER, the UK longitudinal studies consortium funded by the ESRC and the Medical Research Council. CLOSER brings together eight biomedical and social longitudinal studies, with participants born as early as the 1930s to the present day.
Before I worked for CLOSER I helped run a charity supporting vulnerable people with different needs, including addictions, mental health problems, debt or homelessness. I saw first-hand the damaging effects of these complex issues and the barriers people face in their attempts to get back to work and take advantage of opportunities many of us take for granted.
Read more on ESRC Blog: Disadvantage and worklessness: a longitudinal perspective

Heather Joshi.
Is the glass half full or half empty? On International Women’s Day, here are some findings from our research. They point to progress, it’s true, but also to persistent inequality between men and women.
The good news is that over time the average pay gap has been reducing. For those aged under 30, it’s now narrow, thanks to the way women have increasingly been matching, if not overtaking, men in education. This progress should show through as 30-somethings get on and get older.
But that’s to come (perhaps). As for now, there remains disparity between men and women in mid life. Women of equal education and experience are not equally paid. Pay gaps become earnings gaps and across women’s lifetimes they are magnified because men work longer hours and spend more time in paid employment, with implications for pensions and the (more…)

 
The Nuffield Research Placement programme allows 1,000 students in the first year of post-16 education who want to go on to study Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths at university to gain some work experience in their field of interest. It’s (usually) done during the summer for around four weeks. Students who don’t have a family history of going to university or who attend schools in less well-off areas are encouraged to apply.
For the past three years, the IOE’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies has provided work placements to five Nuffield students. Over the course of their placements, the (more…)

Alison Park. 
Government departments and agencies build up routine information about all of us as part of their everyday activities. Who should have access to these data?
Were it not for Brexit, it’s likely that the last few weeks would have seen far more discussion about this topic. On 5 July the Cabinet Office published the response to its consultation on the ‘Better Use of Data in Government’. The document’s proposals  form the basis of a new Digital Economy Bill, which includes legislation to help researchers access data. The next day Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care, published her review of data security standards and proposed a new consent model for data sharing in the NHS and social care.
Researchers are interested in this so called ‘administrative data’ because its volume and detail can vastly exceed what it’s possible to collect through other routes such as surveys. As a result, bodies like the Economic and Social Research Council have set up special (more…)

Heather Joshi. 
In the July special issue of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies researchers from the UK and US have collaborated to investigate whether the experience of moving home affects children’s development in their pre-school years.
Children move home in their early years more often than they do once they start school. Our transatlantic research project looked at two cohorts of children born around the year 2000. We decided to focus on the first five years of life, rather than often-researched school ages, to examine the impact solely of moving home rather than the complications that arise when moving and changing school.
The British families in our study, the UK Millennium Cohort, had some 14,000 children (more…)