The theme of the conference was 'longitudinal research and social policy', which included a major stream devoted to symposia organised by the society's policy arm, Longview. Cohort Network GroupSLLS is proud to host a forum for people working in and on longitudinal studies.It aims to build on links made under the EUCCONET (European Child Cohort Network) whose funding for co--ordination and communication between child cohorts ended in 2013.That venture brought together researchers across the behavioural, developmental, and health and statistical sciences, and the professional data, survey and communications managers who are also an important part of the interdisciplinary teams who create and run these studies.Key objectives of the network are the maintenance and continuation of existing studies and the facilitation of the development of new ones at local or national level, even if the aspiration for a pan--European cohort seems unrealistic.For full details and to

Physical 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.

Starting with Bourdieu’s habitus and capital theory, this paper focuses on the question of whether the cultural resources of families and students have an impact on the status attainment process between the ages of 15 and 45. The analysis is based on the LifE survey, which follows up a youth study conducted by Fend et al. between 1979 and 1983. It can be shown by means of a structural equation model that there is a substantial transmission of cultural capital between parents and their children and that students’ cultural resources have an effect on their educational attainment (reproduction effect). Besides this social inheritance, the amount of cultural capital acquired by age 35 also depends on educational attainment. The effect of cultural capital over the life course is limited to the period up to the completion of vocational/professional education.

A 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 [the authors] 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 [the authors] 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).

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox obtains when the majority of cases with an adverse outcome come from a population of low or moderate risk, and only a few from a minority ‘high risk’ group. Preventive treatment is then better targeted widely than on the ‘high risk’ minority. This study tests whether the prevention paradox applies to the initiation of criminal behaviour, as recorded in longitudinal administrative data from Denmark. Children born in 1984 are followed from birth to early adulthood. A discrete-time Cox model allows for changing covariates over time. The initiation of criminal behaviour is defined as getting a police record between the ages of 15 and 22 as a result of a criminal matter. This outcome was predicted, more accurately than by chance, by a combination of over twenty risk factors, reflecting the major crime reduction paradigms. However, it seems impossible to identify a minor group (<5%) in the population from whom criminals are exclusively recruited. Our example illustrates how the applicability of Rose’s prevention strategy, population based, rather than targeted, depends on how narrowly ’high-risk group’ is defined, for a given distribution of estimated risk, and allows for the possible complementarity of population and targeted measures.

The Zurich Longitudinal Study 'From School to Middle Adulthood' (ZLSE) is a longitudinal study which, to date, encompasses ten surveys from various projects. The study covers a life span from the age of 15 th to the 49 th year of life and started in 1978 when the participants attended their last compulsory school year; another survey is planned for spring 2015 at the age of 52. The focus lies, on the one hand, on a broad coverage of various personality dimensions supplemented by sociobiographical information in adolescence, and, on the other hand, on the professional and non-professional development from adolescence to adulthood. At this moment, data of 485 people representative of the German-speaking part of Switzerland are available. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the study and to explain in detail the individual surveys.

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) is an ongoing longitudinal study of people born in the United Kingdom in a particular week in 1970. It is the third study in Britain’s world-renowned series of birth cohort studies, following the 1946 and 1958 birth cohorts. Compared to the generations born in 1946 and 1958, the 1970 cohort were subject to an era of economic and labour market transformation and turbulence and experienced growing socio-economic inequalities. They can be seen as entering middle age with a degree of reluctance, as child-bearing has been delayed to later ages compared to previous generations. The notion that this generation is more troubled than the previous generation gains some support from the higher levels of mental distress reported by the 1970 cohort members at age 42. This special issue asks how this generation is faring in mid-life, and addresses a diverse range of themes including social mobility, obesity and religion. This paper provides an introduction to the 1970 cohort and the social context in which they have lived, and an overview of the remaining papers in the special issue.

Longitudinal studies have the potential to enhance our understanding of stability and change in religious identity, practice and belief. Good individual-level data would help in developing and testing theories concerning the causes and consequences of religious involvement. Past research has shown, however, that even subtle differences in wording or context can substantially affect responses to questions on religion. The 1970 British Cohort Study offers an important opportunity to test the consistency of self-reported religion and religiosity. In addition, the 2012 sweep asked questions on belief in God and life after death as well as religious affiliation and practice, allowing us to explore the complexity of religious adherence. A close examination of the multiple waves of the BCS70 reveals a large amount of uncertainty in measurement, making it hard to detect whatever genuine change might have occurred. There are indications of considerable unreliability in reported past and present affiliation. It is also difficult to be confident about changes in religious commitment, though a substantial proportion of teenagers who reported that religion was an important part of their lives became relatively unreligious adults. The data on religious belief make it apparent that while some people seem wholly non-religious and a smaller number are actively (and consistently) religious, the majority fall into intermediate categories defined by nominal allegiance, unorthodox belief, or belief in the absence of affiliation or practice. It is clear that multiple survey items covering identity, practice and belief are needed to obtain a reliable picture of religious commitment.