Using new technologies to enhance the value of qualitative data in longitudinal studies: an application to health and well-being, and ageing
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Social Science
Abstract
Qualitative data, such as essays and free response questions in surveys, are rich sources of psychological, social and behavioural information. Yet such information has traditionally been impossible to leverage at a large scale. Recent advances in computational linguistics and machine learning have produced automatic content analysis tools, which have started to be used in a variety of settings including in text used in social media settings such as Facebook and Twitter. We will apply these for the first time to the open responses collected longitudinally within a large national birth cohort study in order to make methodological and theoretical advances in the study of health, well-being, and successful ageing.
Our work will contribute to an important policy debate about which social and emotional skills developed in childhood are vital for well-being throughout life, what interventions might support these, and the factors that underpin successful ageing. The techniques applied will also offer researchers working across a wide range of substantive topic areas a methodological model for extracting greater value out of rich but underutilised large-scale qualitative datasets, making this transformational research on both methodological and substantive scientific grounds.
The project involves three major steps. The first step will be to digitally transcribe 13,000 age 11 essays contained within the National Child Development Study (NCDS), one of the UK's world-renowned birth cohort studies. The data include self-reported essays, written at age 11 and age 50, in response to the following questions: At age 11: "Imagine you are now 25 years old. Write about the life you are leading, your interests, your home life and your work at the age of 25" At age 50: "Imagine that you are now 60 years old...please write a few lines about the life you are leading (your interests, your home life, your health and wellbeing and any work you may be doing)". The responses (13,669 at age 11; 7,383 at age 50) provide a largely untapped source of psychological and behavioural information that can be linked longitudinally to outcomes for the same individuals.
Automatic content analysis tools will next be applied to the transcribed essays in order to undertake quantitative analysis of the words and concepts expressed in essays at age 11 and 50. The words used by an individual will be classified into different categories, such as emotions, social relationships, and articles, allowing psycho-social content to be assessed. We will use both 'open vocabulary' and 'closed vocabulary' approaches.
The classifications derived from open text through content analysis will then be used to quantitatively address a number of research questions, including: What psychological traits and behaviours are reflected in the language used in the essays of a large group of 11 year olds, collected in 1969? What is the association between such revealed psychological traits and behaviours and long-term trajectories of health and well-being across adult life, and early markers of ageing, captured up to the age of 55? How do future ambitions and expectations, as revealed in age-50 essays, relate to age-55 health statuses and practices What degree of persistence can be found in use of language used across the lifetime - between the ages of 11 and age 50, and how does the persistence of traits and behaviours revealed relate to health and well-being in adult life?
The methods developed will be transformative - and will have the potential to unlock information contained open responses in many other national longitudinal data sources. The findings will have strong impact on policy, providing information relevant to schools, local community organisations and health practitioners as to the importance of developing social and emotional skills in childhood and throughout life for lifelong health and well-being.
Our work will contribute to an important policy debate about which social and emotional skills developed in childhood are vital for well-being throughout life, what interventions might support these, and the factors that underpin successful ageing. The techniques applied will also offer researchers working across a wide range of substantive topic areas a methodological model for extracting greater value out of rich but underutilised large-scale qualitative datasets, making this transformational research on both methodological and substantive scientific grounds.
The project involves three major steps. The first step will be to digitally transcribe 13,000 age 11 essays contained within the National Child Development Study (NCDS), one of the UK's world-renowned birth cohort studies. The data include self-reported essays, written at age 11 and age 50, in response to the following questions: At age 11: "Imagine you are now 25 years old. Write about the life you are leading, your interests, your home life and your work at the age of 25" At age 50: "Imagine that you are now 60 years old...please write a few lines about the life you are leading (your interests, your home life, your health and wellbeing and any work you may be doing)". The responses (13,669 at age 11; 7,383 at age 50) provide a largely untapped source of psychological and behavioural information that can be linked longitudinally to outcomes for the same individuals.
Automatic content analysis tools will next be applied to the transcribed essays in order to undertake quantitative analysis of the words and concepts expressed in essays at age 11 and 50. The words used by an individual will be classified into different categories, such as emotions, social relationships, and articles, allowing psycho-social content to be assessed. We will use both 'open vocabulary' and 'closed vocabulary' approaches.
The classifications derived from open text through content analysis will then be used to quantitatively address a number of research questions, including: What psychological traits and behaviours are reflected in the language used in the essays of a large group of 11 year olds, collected in 1969? What is the association between such revealed psychological traits and behaviours and long-term trajectories of health and well-being across adult life, and early markers of ageing, captured up to the age of 55? How do future ambitions and expectations, as revealed in age-50 essays, relate to age-55 health statuses and practices What degree of persistence can be found in use of language used across the lifetime - between the ages of 11 and age 50, and how does the persistence of traits and behaviours revealed relate to health and well-being in adult life?
The methods developed will be transformative - and will have the potential to unlock information contained open responses in many other national longitudinal data sources. The findings will have strong impact on policy, providing information relevant to schools, local community organisations and health practitioners as to the importance of developing social and emotional skills in childhood and throughout life for lifelong health and well-being.
Planned Impact
This project assesses how psychological traits, behaviours and social and emotional skills are revealed in the language of children, and the adults they become. Such traits are then assessed for their importance for lifelong health, well-being and successful ageing. The impact of the proposed transformative research will be achieved through both the substantive and methodological aspects of the project.
First, the work will benefit individuals, families, schools, community workers, and health care professionals. They will benefit from the new information that they gain about the traits and attributes revealed in childhood and in mid-life that are important for happy, healthy and otherwise successful lives. Such benefits will be realised through a dissemination programme that reaches beyond traditional academic circles to those working directly to improve young people's social and emotional skills; and to those working with individuals in mid-life to do the same (described in our Pathways too Impact).
Second, the work will offer methodological advances that will also be of benefit. In the first instance, the impact of these will be on academics across a wide range of disciplines in the computer and social sciences (see academic beneficiaries section) who are seeking to apply the methods developed to other substantive topic areas covered by the NCDS cohort study, and to other large scale datasets. These academics will be benefit by learning about the methods through workshops held in both the US and the UK, and from the newly deposited essays made available at the UK Data archive. Ultimately, the new work enabled by the new methodologies will generate learning in substantive policy areas (as yet unforeseen), which will also be of benefit to policymakers, practitioners, individuals and families.
First, the work will benefit individuals, families, schools, community workers, and health care professionals. They will benefit from the new information that they gain about the traits and attributes revealed in childhood and in mid-life that are important for happy, healthy and otherwise successful lives. Such benefits will be realised through a dissemination programme that reaches beyond traditional academic circles to those working directly to improve young people's social and emotional skills; and to those working with individuals in mid-life to do the same (described in our Pathways too Impact).
Second, the work will offer methodological advances that will also be of benefit. In the first instance, the impact of these will be on academics across a wide range of disciplines in the computer and social sciences (see academic beneficiaries section) who are seeking to apply the methods developed to other substantive topic areas covered by the NCDS cohort study, and to other large scale datasets. These academics will be benefit by learning about the methods through workshops held in both the US and the UK, and from the newly deposited essays made available at the UK Data archive. Ultimately, the new work enabled by the new methodologies will generate learning in substantive policy areas (as yet unforeseen), which will also be of benefit to policymakers, practitioners, individuals and families.
Organisations
Publications
Pongiglione B
(2020)
Do children's expectations about future physical activity predict their physical activity in adulthood?
in International Journal of Epidemiology
| Description | The work and ongoing engagement activities for the project have continued significantly beyond the project end. We have continued extensive dissemination of our research findings including through 2 more international visits undertaken in the last year to enable the collaboration to continue to bear fruit. There are now four publications in journals from the project. In our qualitative work, we contacted a number of study members who had written essays at age 11 and asked them for their recollections and reflections on their essays. To mark the 60th birthday of the study members, and the deposit of the newly transcribed essays we launched a major press campaign based on these recollections in Spring 2018, which were covered by major features by The Times, the Daily Mail, the Express and the BBC's One Show (who framed a whole programme on the theme of Childhood Dreams, as well as featuring our study). We also included this material in our public engagement work, in a special commemorative book for study participants, celebrating the first 60 years of the NCDS study. The major part of the project has been the quantitative analysis applying machine learning to extract linguistic features from the essays and to assess their predictive power for the future. Emergent project findings have now been disseminated very widely at conferences, academic seminars , to policy makers, and in several keynote presentations and public lectures. So far there are two published papers, and two more very close indeed to submission at high impact journals, and two or three more planned as resources allow. Our findings indicate that the children's writing holds strong predictive power for the future. In the first step, we derived a set of linguistic features of the essays using a mainly 'open' content analysis approach, for example using complex statistical approaches to reveal which words and phrases cluster together into latent topics. Analyses also reveal vast differences by gender, and parental social class in the children's writing. (paper in draft). Many of the children wrote about playing sport, especially football, and mentions of playing sport predicted higher future physical activity, especially for boys, whereas mentions of watching sport as a spectator, did not (paper now in print at IJE). The essays were used as the basis of a Shared Task of the 2018 Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Workshop (one 'proceedings' paper published and a further paper in draft), which found signals within the language of future mental health, raising possibilities for using children's writing to derive early warning signs for mental health risk. Further investigations include on social mobility, where we are finding, fascinatingly, that mention of certain topics, such as 'large houses' predicts future income, even after childhood material circumstances are taken into account (paper in draft). Reminiscent of the Nun study, our initial work on cognition finds use of more complex language within the essays is predictive of higher cognitive function 40 years later, though this association no longer remains robustly when childhood cognitive tests (not available to the Nun's study) were also taken into account (paper in draft). There are signals in the language to future health, captured in biomarkers in blood as well as in self-reported health measures (paper in draft) . I applied (unsuccesfully) for a British Academy Senior Fellowship to take forward our ambitious publication strategy for this work and to undertake further empirical analyses. I will continue to see further funding for this work The further development of the work provides the opportunity to pitch the work to the press, this time at both a national and international level (with press teams in our Australian and US collaborators' institutions in support). The press work to date has only covered the small-scale qualitative recollections based on the essays, and all news outlets we were in touch with expressed a very strong interest in the findings of quantitative findings from the work once it has gone through full peer review. 2018: UPDATE: We have successfully fully transcribed all available age 11 essays from the National Child Development Study. The newly transcribed essays and new documentation that we prepared were deposited at the UK Data Service in Jan 2018. On our instruction, UKDS are currently waiting to release these essays so that release can be timed to coincide what we hope will be an extensive feature article about the essays, and this project which we have pitched to a major newspaper. (Target: end March 2018). We also ran a very popular training session on Automated Content Analysis in January 2018, to train researchers on how to use techniques from computational linguistics to analyse these essays or other text. We have started to widely disseminate early findings from analysis, including at 3 invited presentations in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne), at a CLS conference in London, and at a seminar for civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions. Excitingly, the essays have also formed the basis of the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Workshop 2018 Shared Task . We have created bespoke datasets and documentation which have been shared with 12 research groups so far, in locations as diverse as China, Korea, Iran, US and Ireland, for the completion of this task, which will lead to a shared publication later in 2018. |
| Exploitation Route | We've informed three important audiences who are likely to take forward our findings in different ways: 1. Computational linguistics: much work on the predictive power of language using machine learning is done in contexts where the data available to researchers other than the language itself is very sparse, with few outcomes and no survey controls (esp. using social media text); generally this is very short-term indeed, and on highly selected samples (social media users). Our work shows how much of the predictive power of language can be explained by people's characteristics and traits that have been captured scientifically with rich survey data (e.g. on cognitive tests, emotional indices, and income) . It shows that language contains signals, but these signals do not replicate the explanatory power of, or need for, purposefully designed surveys for understanding social outcomes and health. It shows some of the mechanisms between linguistic features and outcomes, that social media data alone cannot unpick. 2. Longitudinal population studies: the work has shown the power of using open content analysis to extract features of language that wouldn't necessarily be detected by hypothesis driven methods, and is helping to spark a wider interest in how open text, collected in studies but previously lying dormant, can now be used. We now have further funding from ESRC to transcribe written text by teachers and analyse this for its content. 3. Policy relevance - the findings have reached and been of interest to a wide range of policy makers including in DWP and Department of Health and we are keen to work to promote the policy relevance of the findings further once the peer review journal articles are in the public domain, soon. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls_research/does-the-language-of-11-year-olds-predict-their-future/ |
| Description | We have undertaken widespread dissemination of the findings from our work including to policymakers and in the press. |
| Sector | Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Invited to present seminar at Department of Health and Social Care |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Positive traits, and childhood mental health issues in NCDS: legacy data project to digitize the Bristol Social Adjustment Guide |
| Amount | £278,665 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2018 |
| End | 04/2019 |
| Title | NCDS - Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Shared Task |
| Description | NCDS - Data for the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Shared Task, 2018. PIs: Stony Brook University (United States) and University College London, UCL Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Data for the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Shared Task, 2018 contains the outputs of the shared task for the CLPsych 2018 workshop, which focused on predicting current and future psychological health from an essay authored in childhood. Language-based predictions of a person's current health have the potential to supplement traditional psychological assessment such as questionnaires, improving intake risk measurement and monitoring. Predictions of future psychological health can aid with both early detection and the development of preventative care. Research into the mental health trajectory of people, beginning from their childhood, has thus far been an area of little work within the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) community. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This shared task represented one of the first attempts to evaluate the use of early language to predict future health; this has the potential to support a wide variety of clinical health care tasks, from early assessment of lifetime risk for mental health problems, to optimal timing for targeted interventions aimed at both prevention and treatment. |
| URL | https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/studies/study?id=8471 |
| Title | NCDS - CLPsych Shared Task 2018 Test and Training Datasets |
| Description | Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Shared Task, 2018: Test and Training Datasets |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | None as yet. |
| URL | http://clpsych.org/shared-task-2018/ |
| Title | NCDS Sweep 2: "Imagine you are 25" Essays (Age 11, 1969), 1st Edition |
| Description | National Child Development Study: "Imagine you are 25" Essays (Sweep 2, Age 11), 1969 |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | None as yet. |
| URL | https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/studies/study?id=8313 |
| Description | Automated content analysis: special training session |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | To coincide with the release of the National Child Development Study Age 11 essays, CLS organised a practical training session for researchers to learn how to use automated content analysis to get the most from the new data. The half-day workshop was led by H. Andrew Schwartz (Stony Brook University). 31 delegates registered for the session. Of the evaluation forms received, 44% rated it as 8 or higher (out of 10) for it's relevancy to their work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/Conference.aspx?itemid=4670&itemTitle=Automated+Content+Analysis%3a+special... |
| Description | Blog: The long roots of childhood, and how they explain economic inequalities across the whole of life |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | On 11 September 2018, Prof Alissa Goodman published a piece on the IOE London blog on how longitudinal evidence can help determine the root causes of economic inequalities in UK society. The blog was a follow-up to her inaugural public lecture in June 2018. At the time of submission, the blog had been viewed 161 times on the CLS website, and 527 many times on the IOE blog. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/the-long-roots-of-childhood-and-how-they-explain-econ... |
| Description | Broadcast: Millions tune in to BBC One to watch film celebrating childhood dreams of NCDS members |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | The BBC One Show travelled back to 1969 in November 2018 to feature a film about three National Child Development Study members who wrote essays at age 11 imagining what their lives would be like when they reached 25. In 2018 the study, and three of its members, Sally Johnston, Steve Christmas and Jackie Adkins turned 60. The BBC interviewed them to see whether they fulfilled their aspirations, and to discover how their lives have unfolded since. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/millions-tune-in-to-bbc-one-to-watch-film-celebrating-childhood-dreams-of-ncds... |
| Description | CLOSER workshop "What can the language used in essays written at age 11 tell us about children's future social mobility?" - November 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The talk was a part of the CLOSER seminar series, which aim to highlight methodological innovations and expertise and in turn facilitate and encourage future collaborations and new research. I showcased a piece of research, which uses the harmonised income and earnings dataset in combination with the linguistic features extracted from the essays written by National Child Development Study (NCDS) participant at age 11. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.closer.ac.uk/event/november-closer-seminar/ |
| Description | CLS Away days |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Between 6 and 8 June 2022, over 60 CLS staff as well as scientific collaborators outside CLS attended a residential away days at Cumberland Lodge. A two day programme covered a range of activities including centre culture, how teams work together and across the centre, new ways of working, an update to the new CLS studies and an introduction to the policy work done at CLS. As well as making important future plans, feedback suggested that attendees got many benefits from attending. It also improved morale in the centre and allowed for important networking with collaborators. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Fifth Annual Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology, 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Age 11 NCDS essays datasets form the basis of this year's "CLPSych Shared Task 2018 " in which computational linguists use language from age 11y and age 50y essays to predict mental health outcomes into the future. The aim is to improve intake assessment and monitoring, and to improve understanding of early life markers and development of preventative care. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://clpsych.org/shared-task-2018/ |
| Description | Five reasons why I liked ECSR conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Blog post describing my experiences when attending the European Consortium of Sociological Research Conference in Lausanne |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.closer.ac.uk/news-opinion/blog/bozena-ecsr-conference/ |
| Description | Invited to participate in the project Secondary Education and Social Change in the United Kingdom since 1945 (SESC) at University of Cambridge |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In September 2019, Professor Alissa Goodman was personally invited to join a workshop organised by Secondary Education and Social Change in the United Kingdom since 1945 (SESC) at University of Cambridge. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Invited to present a seminar at National Foundation for Educational Research |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Alissa Goodman was invited by Jude Hillary, Quantitative Research Director at NFER, to present the novel approach used to analyse the NCDS age 11 essays, and showcase the importance and value longitudinal datasets for research purposes. The talk was attended by NFER researchers and analysts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012,2018 |
| Description | Invited to speak at the IOE annual stakeholders reception |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Supporters |
| Results and Impact | Alissa Goodman was asked to speak at the IOE annual stakeholders summer reception, which featured the 60th birthday of the 1958 cohort, and the age 11 essays project. Her presentation covered the contribution of the study to research on education policy and social mobility over its 60 year history. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Linguistic fingerprints across a lifetime: submitted session to Scientific Conference to celebrate the 60th birthday of the National Child Development Study |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This was a submitted session to the CLS Scientific Conference celebrating 60 years of National Child Development Study. The mixed academic and non-academic audience expressed great interest in the early stages of this research, and the implications for policy were extensively discussed |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | NCDS 60th anniversary film |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | As part of CLS's celebration of the first 60 years of the 1958 National Child Development Study, we released a short film highlighting the impact and importance of the study. The film includes interviews with a study member, Principal Investigators past and present, and Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn. It showcases key impacts and discoveries in areas including smoking during pregnancy, adult basic skills and social mobility. The purpose of the film is to position NCDS as a leading source of evidence for policy and to secure support for its future, by showcasing its incredible achievements to date. The film was launched in March 2019 to coincide with the study members' birthdays, and is being promoted through CLS's core digital communications channels, including its website and social media. CLS will continue to monitor the engagement with the film and update this entry with the findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/1958-national-child-development-study/ |
| Description | Participant mailing: NCDS 60th birthday commemorative book |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | In March 2019, CLS released a 60-page commemorative book to the participants of the 1958 National Child Development Study. The book celebrates the first six decades of the study's history, and is intended as a thank-you gift to study members for their life-long commitment. It also serves to solidify that commitment and re-engage participants in advance of the Age 62 Sweep. The book was posted to 12,500 study members as part of their annual birthday mailing. An additional 1,500 study members will be given a copy of the book at their Age 62 home visit. Each chapter of the book tells the story of the study and its members' lives in a given decade: beginning with birth and early years, through to middle age. It includes the findings, history and impact of the study to date, as well as personal reflections and stories from individual study members. CLS has also adapted the contents of the book into web and social media content in an effort to share the material more widely. Throughout March 2019, we will share the content on our website and through Twitter to engage users of NCDS data and evidence across academic, policy and third sector circles. CLS will carry out an evaluation of the book and accompanying digital communications and update this entry with those findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://ncds.info/home/about/ncds-at-60/ |
| Description | Peggy Kern's presentation at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education's Creating Connections conference, Australia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Peggy Kern gave an invited talk at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education's Creating Connections conference, Australia. Peggy spoke on 'The 21st century researcher: Possibilities and pitfalls of incorporating social media.' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Personally invited to present a seminar at Monash University, Melbourne Australia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Alissa Goodman was invited to present in the Centre for Health Economics Seminar Series, Monash University. She presented the UK's birth cohort studies, with some very early findings from a project analysing the predictive power of language used in essays that cohort members wrote when they were age 11. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/CHE_Monash/status/922953267046264832 |
| Description | Personally invited to present a seminar at University of Melbourne |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Alissa Goodman presented the UK's birth cohort studies, with some very early findings from a project analysing the predictive power of language used in essays that cohort members wrote when they were age 11. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Possible and actual selves: Do children's expectations about future physical activity predict their adult activities? - NCDS 60 years of our lives: a scientific conference celebrating the NCDS at 60 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was a part of the symposium entitled "Linguistic fingerprints across the whole of life: Analysing the language used in childhood essays and its predictive power for the future ". It described the project and prompted further discussions on the use of language and its predictive power, both within our research team, as well as with others, who attended the symposium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Possible and actual selves: Do children's expectations about future physical activity predict their adult activities? - SLLS Milan 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was a part of the symposium entitled "Big Data Meets Long Data: Linguistic Fingerprints Across the Whole of Life: Analysing the Language Used in Childhood Essays and its Predictive Power for the Future". It prompted further discussions on the use of language and its predictive power, both within our research team, as well as with others, who attended the symposium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Poster: Linguistic fingerprints across life: Language used in childhood essays and its predictive power across five decades |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern will present the poster 'Linguistic fingerprints across life: Language used in childhood essays and its predictive power across five decades' at the 2019 Society of Personality and Social Psychology Conference and lifespan preconference, Portland, OR USA. The poster will draw from the project in collaboration with Alissa Goodman and others. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation at SLLS: Big data meets long data: Language used in childhood essays and its predictive power for the future |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern chaired and presented a symposium Big data meets long data: Language used in childhood essays and its predictive power for the future at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies International Conference, Milan, Italy, using the project in collaboration with Alissa Goodman and others. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation at workshop focussed on longitudinal studies in the UK and Low and Middle Income Countries, by Royal Statistical Society |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In March 2017, Professor Alissa Goodman spoke at a workshop focused on longitudinal studies in the UK and Low and Middle Income Countries, organised by Royal Statistical Society, presenting results from the CLS cohorts and on the analysis of essays in NCDS. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation: Mid Career Research Excellence Award Address |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern presented at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education 2018 Awards Evening, Melbourne, Australia, using a project in collaboration with Alissa Goodman and others. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation: Understanding & utilizing personality cues from big data resources |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern presented at Measuring and Modeling Persons and Situations Meeting, Alexandria, VA USA, using methods from her collaboration with Alissa Goodman and others. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2019 |
| Description | Presented symposium: Using childhood essays to predict physical and mental health across the lifespan |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern presented a symposium talk at the NCDS 60 Years of Our Lives conference in London, March 2018. She showcased the project in collaboration with Alissa Goodman and others. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Press release/pitch: Did the Baby Boomers fulfil their childhood dreams? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | In 1969, more than 10,000 11-year-olds, taking part in the National Child Development Study (NCDS), were asked to write an essay imagining what their lives would be like at 25. In 2018, these children, and the study turned 60 years old. CLS contacted a number of the study members to share their essay with them and to see how their lives had unfolded. For most, this was the first time they had seen their essay since they wrote it some 50 years ago. The story and case studies of cohort members were pitched to the Times 2 supplement as an exclusive feature article, which was published in April 2018. Feature articles appeared in the Daily Mail and Daily Express in May 2018. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/did-the-baby-boomers-fulfil-their-childhood-dreams/ |
| Description | Public lecture: Research on inequality: the long roots of childhood, informing policies, and generational change |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this lecture Professor Alissa Goodman spoke about her research on inequalities, showing how both cross-sectional and longitudinal data are being used to illuminate and address some of the major social and policy questions of our time. A recording of the lecture was made available on the UCL Institute of Education and CLS websites. About the lecture Alissa demonstrated how the UK's birth cohort studies - which each track large numbers of individuals (typically around 17,000) from birth and throughout their lives - reveal the long roots of childhood experience on later life, and the importance of tackling childhood mental health problems. Alissa also explored how earlier adult life is influencing the decisions of a generation now approaching retirement age, and some of the striking generational changes occurring in our society, including in income, and mental health. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/events/research-on-inequality-the-long-roots-of-childhood-informing-policies-a... |
| Description | Sir Roger Jowell Memorial Lecture 2019 - Keynote speaker - Professor Alissa Goodman |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On 13 June 2019, about 300 people attended this public lecture at City University, organised by NatCen Social Research and the Social Research Association. Keynote speaker Professor Goodman (Director of CLS) discussed research on inequalities, showing how longitudinal data is used to understand both the causes and consequences of educational disadvantage in the UK. She presented findings on the current social inequalities in education and showed some of the longer-term effects of educational inequalities. Speaking to the policy implications of educational disadvantage, Rt Hon David Laws (Education Policy Institute) presented findings from the Education Policy Institutes' research on the evolution of the disadvantage gap over the last decade. He examined what the evidence suggests may be behind inequalities, where focus should be given to narrow disadvantages and what the political context is. The free event was chaired by the Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, Anna Vignoles. It was followed by a drinks reception, which provided an opportunity for attendees to discuss research and policy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/events/sir-roger-jowell-memorial-lecture-2019/ |
| Description | UCL Festival of Culture talk on Can the language of 11 year olds predict their future? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On 6 June 2018, Prof Alissa Goodman gave a lecture as part of the 2018 UCL Festival of Culture, presenting CLS's exploration into the extent to which the language of 11-year-olds can foretell their future. About the lecture Nearly 50 years ago, in 1969, more than 10,000 11-year-olds across Great Britain wrote an essay imagining what their lives would be would like by the time they were 25. They were all participants in the National Child Development Study, which began when they were all born, in a single week in March 1958, and which has been tracking their lives ever since. As the study turns 60 in 2018, a team of researchers from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), Stonybrook University in New York, and University of Melbourne has been analysing the essays written by the 11-year-olds, alongside the data collected about each of them through the study over the past six decades. This session explored the extent to which the language the 11-year-olds used in their essays would foretell their future lives. It examined the power of the essays in predicting their cognitive function, physical activity and economic status throughout their adult lives. About the UCL Festival of Culture The UCL Festival of Culture is a five-day-long festival, comprising talks, workshops and exhibitions, showcased the world-class research being carried out by staff and students from across the arts, social sciences and education. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/events/ucl-festival-of-culture-can-the-language-of-11-year-olds-predict-their-... |
| Description | Webinar: Introduction to the 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On 15 May 2018, CLS hosted a webinar for new, existing and prospective users of NCDS and BCS70 data. There were 52 delegates registered for the event from across the UK and abroad. About the webinar This introductory webinar provided an overview of the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study, with a focus on wellbeing measures available in each cohort. It covered: study design, sweeps and samples, accessing the data, documentation, missing data, updates on what's new in each, wellbeing measures, and examples of how the wellbeing measures have been used in previous research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Webinar: Introduction to the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study 1970, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL IoE, 21st March 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 39 mainly postgraduate researchers registered for the webinar and received preparatory material, but at the last minute (19th March) it had to be postponed because of staff illness (Australian flu). It is due to be rescheduled shortly. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/Conference.aspx?itemid=4652&itemTitle=Webinar%3a+Introduction+to+the+1958+a... |
| Description | What can the language used in essays written at age 11 tell us about children's future social mobility? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Conference Presentation at the European Consortium of Sociological Research Conference in Lausanne (12-14 September 2019) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Which dreams came true, Presentation to the Department for Work and Pensions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | After presenting early findings from this project at DWP, the feedback was that the audience:'it was so interesting I could've listened to a presentation at least double the length'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | conference presentation "Linguistic Insights into Intergenerational Social Mobility" - SLLS Milan 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was a part of the symposium entitled "Big Data Meets Long Data: Linguistic Fingerprints Across the Whole of Life: Analysing the Language Used in Childhood Essays and its Predictive Power for the Future". It prompted further discussions on the use of language and its predictive power, both within our research team, as well as with others, who attended the symposium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/df1448_4824417496ff40e3845f4fcc236693ee.pdf |