The Power and Potential of Longitudinal Research
Neville Butler Memorial Lecture 2010.
Visit http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/ for more information.
The lecture will start with the key question of why we should undertake longitudinal studies – noting their disadvantages and strengths, and the ways of capitalising on the later. The main focus of the talk thereafter will be on why, in seeking to understand psychological and social development, it is crucially important to study biological features. Findings from the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) study are used to illustrate how environments ‘get under the skin’. Then the findings on gene-environment interactions (GxE) will be used to illustrate how genes ‘get outside the skin’ by operating through the environment. Attention will be drawn to a few of the striking findings on deprivation-specific patterns. It concludes that longitudinal research is essential for answering developmental questions, that both general population and high risk strategies are required, and that modern psychosocial studies have got to incorporate biology into their design.
To book a place please contact: r.bull@ioe.ac.uk
