Working papers

This CLS working paper uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to examine the diversity of the characteristics and circumstances of British mothers at the start of the twenty-first century. The report explores and interprets the socio-economic profile of the age at motherhood.

Angela Brassett-Grundy and Neville Butler use data on over 10,000 individuals from the 1970 British Cohort Study to provide an estimate of the prevalence of childhood AD/HD in a birth cohort and to explore the age-30 outcomes of those with childhood AD/HD.
Items from the Conners rating scale completed by parents and teachers, and the parental Rutter questionnaire were used to identify a group of cohort members with AD/HD symptoms at age Multiple regression analyses using probit specifications were used to ascertain the effect of age-10 AD/HD on twenty-four outcomes measured at age 30, whilst controlling for a large number of the cohort member’s socio-economic, personal and familial characteristics measured at birth and age 5.
Results showed there was a prevalence of AD/HD of 7.4%, in the upper end of the range usually reported. Although boys with AD/HD symptoms at age 10 outnumber girls, the ratio found was lower than much previous research has indicated, at 1.7:1.
Men and women with childhood AD/HD were significantly more likely than their unaffected counterparts to face a wide range of negative outcomes at age 30, spanning domains of education, economic status, housing, relationships, crime and health. These findings held true even when controlling for a number of background personal, familial, social and economic characteristics. Men tended to fare worse than women.

Keywords: ADHD, BCS70, Rutter, Conner’s scale, gender differences.

Angela Brassett-Grundy and Neville Butler provide an overview of what AD/HD is, take a brief look at some of the current debates surrounding the conceptual and measurement issues associated with AD/HD, and review some of the recent literature with a specific focus on the lifecourse outcomes for individuals diagnosed with AD/HD.

Keywords: ADHD, literature review, lifecourse outcomes.

This CLS working paper describes the disproportionately stratified design of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), based on a sample of electoral wards and the practicalities of implementing it.

This CLS working paper examines the costs and benefits of educating looked after children (LAC). The report aims to provide information on the costs of current arrangements for the education of LAC. It uses data from the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).

This CLS working paper examines youth factors and labour market experience in job satisfaction using data from the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). The paper links two components of psychological state – job satisfaction and malaise – to general list satisfaction.

This CLS working paper analyses the pay gap between men and women in the 1958 National Child Development (NCDS) and 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) using data from the Age 42 and Age 30 sweeps respectively. The paper examines cohort members’ hourly earnings in full-time jobs.

Harvey Goldstein, Huiki Pan and John Bynner show how repeated durations of particular events within individuals can be modelled using a flexible discrete time event history model that incorporates individual level random effects. The model is applied to the analysis of partnership episodes for adult members of the National Child Development Study followed up between the ages of 16 and 33.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, event history, random effects, partnership episodes.

John Bynner, Neville Butler, Elsa Ferri, Peter Shepherd and Kate Smith outline the entire content of the 1991-2000 surveys of the National Child Development Study & the 1970 British Cohort Study: a landmark follow-up where, for the first time, both national birth cohort studies were in the field at the same time with exactly the same questionnnaires.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, BCS70, 1970 birth cohort, fieldwork methodology, survey design.

Dick Wiggins, M. Ely and Kevin Lynch provide an evaluation of a range of currently available (2000) software remedies to handle missngenss in the context of  longitudinal research, illustrating their use with data from the NCDS 1958 birth cohort.  The software modules compared are NORM, SOLAS and the SPSS Missing Values Analysis Module.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, missingness, unit non-response, item non-response, attrition, bias, imputation.