Attachment insecurity (e.g., attachment avoidance and anxiety) is a fundamental characteristic linked to how people engage with and experience power dynamics inherent in social relationships. Social power motives (e.g. dominance, prestige) also predict various behaviours, preferences for, and experiences of social relationships, many of which overlap those connected to attachment insecurity. However, there is no extant work directly linking attachment insecurity to social power motives.

Yet there is ample evidence to hypothesize a relationship. The power motives are associated with the quality and outcomes of various close relationships, including friendships and romantic partnerships. A stronger general power motive in men is linked to breakups, intimate partner violence, and sexual coercion in romantic relationships. In non-romantic friendships, power motives predicts fewer dyadic interactions, increased frustration and guilt in friendship episodes, and more instrumental, assertive, and self-expansive striving in friendship. Similar outcomes have also been linked to differences in adult attachment orientations, suggesting a possible link between power motives and attachment orientations. On the other hand early-life attachment insecurity is also related to important later life outcome variables, such as antisocial behaviour and mental health. Might this relationship be mediated by individuals’ goals are and the way they behave, which are captured by dimensions of social power?

The aims of this project are to look at several factors in an individual’s upbringing, including attachment style, parental personality, socioeconomic status, and parental dynamics, to see how these factors are linked to dominance and prestige seeking personality traits, as well as life outcome variables.

Recent analysis of longitudinal cohort studies suggests that problem gambling in young adults is associated with subsequent suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts. Our study proposes to replicate these findings in a new cohort (ALSPAC), and expand upon the existing research by investigating whether socioeconomic status factors interact with these relationships, if they exist. Socioeconomic factors are associated with problem gambling and suicidality, but little is known about whether they interact to increase the risk of suicidality. We also hope to investigate if other gambling factors, such as gambling frequency, predict suicidality, as well as investigating if gambling behaviour predicts other negative mental health outcomes, such as self-harm, depressive mood and negative well-being. As problem gambling and suicidality are both public health issues, especially amongst young adults in the UK, understanding the relationships and mechanisms of these problems is important. It is hoped that this research can reveal potential negative mental-health consequences of problem gambling and help identify populations who may be at specific risk of these negative consequences, such as those with lower socioeconomic status. Thus, evidence from this study may inform gambling reduction or suicide prevention strategies to improve their effectiveness and improve the lives of those who may be at risk of gambling problems or suicide.

A link between ALSPAC and Bristol City Council (BCC) is needed to ensure that ALSPAC findings can be translated into useful policymaking evidence for Bristol City Council. The link will enable a sustainable infrastructure to be set up to ensure that BCC is aware of the level of evidence that ALSPAC is able to provide on priority health issues and BCC is able to make ALSPAC aware of issues that they would like evidence on. The data to answer these policy questions might already be in the data repository or it might require new funding applications to provide this evidence.

Changes in DNA methylation have been associated with exposure to air pollution and other environmental exposures. However, it is yet unclear whether early life developmental sensitivity or the accumulation of exposures have the most significant effects.
This study will analyse the association of air pollution and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) with DNA methylation at different ages.

Climate change is increasingly affecting our planet, impacting people’s health, security and livelihood, as well as wider biodiversity. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that many studies have identified ‘climate anxiety’ (or ‘eco-anxiety’) as an emotional response to these events. Numerous studies have found that anxiety regarding climate change is associated with worse mental health, such as higher rates of depressive and anxiety symptoms, although the majority of these studies are small, cross-sectional and from unrepresentative samples, limiting both generalisability and the extent to which causal conclusions can be drawn. There is therefore a need to explore these questions using data from a large-scale longitudinal population-based study; this is what we intend to do here, using data from ALSPAC.

Over the past three decades, adolescent emotional problems have risen at an alarmingly rate. One of the biggest changes in young people’s lives over the last few decades has been the parallel rise in digital media use, however, implications for trends in youth mental health remain unclear. Efforts to understand the role of digital media in relation to youth mental health have so far been limited by retrospective self-reports. One way to advance our understanding of digital media is to use ecological momentary assessments (EMA). EMA is a research method that involves real time reports in a real world setting. As such, it provides more objective and fine-grained data about both time and type of digital media use. The current project will test whether built-in features of a smartphone, as well as EMA, can be used to complement our understanding of digital media use among children and adolescents, and the possible impact this may be having on their emotional problems.

Psychotic experiences, such as hallucinations or delusions, are associated with numerous negative health outcomes. Previous work suggests a potential relationship between psychotic experiences and religious beliefs and behaviours, which may moderate or mediate associations between psychotic experiences and negative health outcomes, yet findings are contradictory and high-quality studies are rare. We therefore plan to use ALSPAC data to explore these relationships in more detail.

Missing data - such as from loss-to-follow-up in longitudinal studies - can lead to bias in analyses, resulting in incorrect conclusions. Various methods have been developed to try and account for such bias due to missing data; two common approaches are Multiple Imputation (MI), where missing data are imputed numerous times, analysed and then combined together, and Inverse-Probability Weighting (IPW), where individuals with observed data are weighted so they represent the original sample. However, sometimes these approaches are insufficient by themselves - e.g., MI may not be appropriate when imputing large swathes of missingness due to potential model misspecification/increased noise, while IPW is more challenging when there is missing data in the covariates of the missingness/weighting model. Given this, there is a need to develop and explore methods which combine MI and IPW to maximise the strengths and minimise the limitations of each approach. While previous work in this area has been conducted, the current approaches cannot easily be applied to complex real-world data such as in ALSPAC and need to be combined to increase their utility to applied researchers (e.g., using MI to impute missing baseline covariate data in the IPW weighting model, followed by IPW to weight participants within a given 'block' of data, then MI again to impute missing data in the substantive analysis model).

Infertility, defined as the inability to achieve pregnancy within 12 months of regular unprotected sexual intercourse, affects one in six couples across the globe. A range of environmental and genetic factors may drive infertility, including the age-related decline of sperm and oocyte quality and quantity, infectious diseases, and rare Mendelian disorders such as cystic fibrosis. However, the exact cause remains undetermined in up to 28% of couples and 40% of women with infertility. Given that current treatments such as in vitro fertilisation pose physical, emotional, and financial burdens on couples and healthcare systems, a richer understanding of the biology and pathophysiology of infertility is urgently necessary. This project will conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in ALSPAC and other participating cohorts. In addition, the project will conduct a GWAS of infertility (not in ALSPAC).