Proposal summaries
B135 - NAC Fellowship - 01/11/2003
(No outline received).
B134 - Cognitive behavioural educational outcomes of children who have been bereaved - 01/11/2003
(No outline received).
B132 - Improved learning in the mentally handicapped - 01/10/2003
(No outline received).
B131 - Replication of the gene-environment interaction of Moffit and Caspi in the children - looking at the onset of depression - 01/10/2003
(No outline received).
B130 - The aetiology of traits contributing to autism and the autistic spectrum disorders - 01/09/2003
This research project is focused within the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) which was specifically designed to identify features in the environment which influence health and development and ways that the effect of such features may be modified by the genotype of the individual. The proposal is to address a number of questions concerning the aetiology of autism and the autistic spectrum disorders by concentrating on the different traits that are an integral part of these disorders. This will involve determination of associations with immunisations (and mercury exposures), obstetric factors, maternal and infant infections, fetal exposure to toxins and dietary features as well as a study of co-morbidity such as digestive symptoms and the presence of coeliac disease. This baseline study will then be available for specific add on projects which may concern analysis of DNA for specific candidate genes, serum for signs of infection or autoimmune disorderes, or umbilical cord for toxins.
B129 - Diet IGF and cancer risk an inter-generational investigation - 01/09/2003
A westernised diet increases the risk of breast, prostate and colorectal cancers. Prospective studies
suggest a common mediator: high circulating IGF-I concentrations. Recent data suggested IGF-I is also
associated with cervical cancer. The large inter-individual differences in IGF-I concentrations are thought to
be partly heritable, but also strongly dependent upon nutrition. We suggest that interactions between
heritable factors and nutrition determine an individual's IGF-I concentration and subsequent cancer risk.
We propose a nested case-control study within ALSPAC. To date there have been 400 incident cases of
cancer in the ALSPAC mothers. Dietary information and blood samples have been collected from mothers
(in pregnancy) prior to the cancer presentation and from their children at age 7-8 years. We will measure
circulating concentrations of IGF-I, IGF-II and IGFBP-3 in (a) mothers who have developed breast or
cervical cancer (b) control mothers without cancer and (c) their children. We will examine whether
IGF-measures were prospectively associated with the development of cancer. Furthermore we will use
the disease-free mother-child pairs to examine associations between IGF-measures in mothers and their offspring
and the extent to which these may be due to common patterns of diet, other shared environmental exposures
or may be inherited.
B126 - Dietary influences on insulin resistance at 8 years of age - 01/09/2003
(No outline received).
B2057 - Funds to processes linked FE HE data - 01/08/2003
.2 The ALSPAC Cohort in Relation to Education Provision
The young people in the study span 3 academic years, referred to as the 'oldest', 'middle', and 'youngest' cohorts. The cases are unevenly distributed across the three years with approximately the following proportions: Oldest cohort - 25% Middle cohort - 60% Youngest cohort - 15%
2.3 Further & Higher Education, and Work Based Learning
In academic year 2007/08 the oldest cohort potentially entered Year 12 or may have left compulsory schooling. This means that they may no longer feature in the NPD, but for those undertaking further education, their educational participation should be picked up in the Individual Learner Record (ILR). In subsequent years they may also move into HE, where their participation would be picked up in the HESA Student Record. At these ages, the young people clearly become of prime interest to this department. Linking to the ILR and HESA data sets offers the potential to continue tracking the educational history of participants, offering the potential for in depth analyses of progression.
2.4 Publication Record
ALSPAC researchers have a strong track record of using linked education data. Over the past five years, 23 peer-reviewed papers have used linked data to investigate education related hypotheses.1-23 These publications used the wealth of data available from ALSPAC; incorporating the influence of genetic variation on attainment, and using detailed individual level data on social background and aspirations to help describe the impact of disadvantaged upbringings on life chances and aspirations. Evidence from ALSPAC, including linked education data, were used to contribute to the Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances by Frank Field MP 'The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children becoming Poor Adults'24 and the Marmot Review 'Fair Society, Healthy Lives'.25
3. Project Summary
2.1 BIS will contract ALSPAC to conduct linkage to NPD/Data Service/HESA records to collect and process educational attainments for the ALSPAC cohort members from the age of 16 onwards. The linkage will focus on Further Education/ Vocational data provided in the ILR extract and Higher Education information provided by HESA and NPD.
2.2 A cost effective mechanism, using ALSPAC's existing linkage to the NPD, has been confirmed that will allow collection and linkage of ILR and HESA data alongside
KS5 data via the NPD. These data will follow on from the data collected from NPD under ALSPAC's contract with the DfE.
3. Proposed work
The key elements of the work to be undertaken are:
Arrange access to data & documentation Securely archive raw data Conduct linkage quality control work Anonymise the data set (remove personal identifiers, sensitive variables and replace NPD pupil IDs with a new unique ALSPAC ID) Reformat the data to ALSPAC standards to ensure compatibility with the linked schools data and self-reported participant data. Publish 'built' files of the data within the ALSPAC resource
Access and matching arrangements have been agreed as follows: Confirmation from the Department (BIS) that there is an ILR-NPD-HESA matched dataset; NPD and Dissemination Unit (Data Services Group) has advised us that the NPD-HESA matched dataset can be shared with ALSPAC under existing contractual arrangements with the Department for Education (DfE); NPD and Dissemination Unit (Data Services Group) has confirmed that the ILR-NPD matched dataset can be shared with ALSPAC once the contract with BIS has been confirmed.
Table 1 details the 5 elements of data linking included in the contract and the associated timings.
B125 - Energy expenditure and fat gain in adolescence - 01/08/2003
(No outline received).
B124 - Indices and characteristics of childrens body surface area and shape from quantative 3D scanning - 01/08/2003
(No outline received).
B128 - Maternal ingestion of phytoestrogens and their effect on maternal health and outcome of pregnancy - 01/07/2003
(No outline received).
B127 - Identify ways in which soy formula and other soy product ingestion in infants affects child development - 01/07/2003
(No outline received).
B123 - Associations between diet and obesity - 01/07/2003
(No outline received).
B122 - Does performance in eye movement control/predict risk-taking behaviour - 01/07/2003
(No outline received).
B121 - Chronic fatigue disorders of sleep phase duration - 01/07/2003
(No outline received).
B120 - Investigating the aetiology of chlamydia - associated with tubal factor infertility - 01/06/2003
(No outline received).
B119 - Neighbourhood and household influences on injuries to preschool children - 01/06/2003
Injuries caused by accidents are a particular problem in young children and children's injury rates vary considerably from place to place. Low-income neighbourhoods have higher child injury rates than high-income neighbourhoods, and recent research suggests that only part of the difference is due to variations in the social, economic and demographic composition of local populations. This research aims to find out the relative contributions of family characteristics and neighbourhood features to the risk of injury to children aged 0-4 years in Bristol and its surrounding region, to discover some of the mechanisms that create patterns of inequality. The objectives are:
1) to determine the risk factors acting at the level of the child, the household and the neighbourhood, and whether these risks act independently.
2) to determine whether residents' perceptions of neighbourhood and local social networks are related to geographical variations in the risk of injury.
3) to determine the size of effects and interactions between risk factors, and identify modifiable risk factors that might be subject to intervention.
4) to identify the scale (size of neighbourhoods) at which any effects of place are most evident.
B118 - Expression of Interest Evidence and guidance Collaborating Centres - 01/06/2003
(No outline received).
B117 - Methods to deal with missing data in ALSPAC - 01/06/2003
Analyses of data from longitudinal studies are often complicated by the presence of missing values, caused
by participant dropout or non-response. Failure to allow for this can lead to both biased and inefficient
statistical analyses. Analyses ignoring problems caused by missing data are common. Statistical research has
generated better ways to deal with these problems, but the methods are technically challenging. The
proposed research will focus on the application of multiple imputation (MI) - the most flexible available
method - in longitudinal studies. We will demonstrate the potential of MI to reduce bias and increase
precision in analyses of data from the ALSPAC birth cohort study and the ART-CC and ART-LINC HIV
cohort collaborations. We will also clarify the circumstances in which analyses allowing for missing data are
likely to have advantages over simpler methods. We will develop a framework for simulations that allow
evaluation of characteristics of imputation procedures, and use both simulations and analyses of longitudinal
data to examine how to deal with the model complexity that characterises application of these procedures.
We will adapt existing software to improve model diagnostics that may alert the user to problems in
imputation procedures and to facilitate sensitivity analyses that examine robustness of results to data that are
missing not at random MNAR). We will work with members of the CONSORT and STROBE groups, and
with journal editors, to provide guidelines on reporting analyses that deal with missing data.
B116 - Risk factors for the onset of depression in adolescence neuro-endocrine mechanisms and sex differences - 01/06/2003
(No outline received).