BUILDING THE EVIDENCE BASE FROM LONGITUDINAL DATA

Survey data from cross-sectional snapshots give an incomplete picture of the social fabric. Without longitudinal information, planners, practitioners, social scientists and policy makers would be in the dark about dynamics, durations and pathways of human development. Longitudinal data collected in birth cohort studies give a better guide to long-term processes and outcomes and are more informative about the causal relations that are the drivers of disadvantage or success. The content and structure of Britain's Birth Cohort Studies are described to illustrate the challenges of creating and studying longitudinal evidence. Examples of findings and policies based on these prospective longitudinal studies are given, along with a discussion of the practical decisions that have to be confronted in undertaking them.     

Basic Skills in Adolescents' Occupational Preparation

Occupational preparation is directed at giving young people access to continuing and rewarding employment. It attempts to impart personal qualities and competencies that will attract potential employers and provide the particular skills necessary for employment in different kinds of jobs. This article addresses the first of these two issues: what are the basic elements of employability, and how do young people acquire them?     

Childhood risks and protective factors in social exclusion

Combating social exclusion is a dominant theme in the current policy agenda. Yet the term social exclusion is of relatively recent origin. It was promoted originally in France in policy debates surrounding disability (Evans, 2000) and through theoretical developments in sociology and political science about the increasing detachment of certain individuals and groups from the state in late modernity (Beck and others, 1994). A quite different and more long‐standing research tradition is to be found in developmental psychology—respectively in the sub‐fields of ‘developmental psychopathology’ (Rutter, 1993) and ‘life course theory and lifespan developmental psychology’ (Elder and others 1993, 1998a&b; Lerner,1998; Lerner and others, 2000). The two themes come together in the idea of risk: Which children are most vulnerable to adult psychiatric disorders or criminality? Which children are likely to become socially excluded as adults? A dialogue between risk and social exclusion is likely to be fruitful in bringing together large and diverse research literatures combining both explanatory and intervention studies to bear on a central problem of modern society. The purpose of this paper is to begin such a task, but selectively, focusing on the main themes of research, as illuminated by key findings. The paper concludes with a consideration of recent policy initiatives to combat social exclusion, in which the ideas of risk and protection have a central place. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Measurement and Evaluation of Social Attitudes in Two British Cohort Studies

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the internal consistency and validity of six attitudes scales assessing left–right beliefs, political cynicism, antiracism, libertarian-authoritarian views, and gender equality (two versions) in two large nationally representative samples of the British population born in 1958 and 1970. In the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) 10,827 participants completed a series of social attitudes items in 1991 at age 33 and again in 2000 at age 42. In 2000 at age 30, 11,114 participants of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) completed a broadly similar set of items of which 8,906 participants had also completed a shorter version of the same social attitudes questionnaires 4 years earlier in 1996, at age 26. Based on the data from the two cohorts we conducted confirmatory analyses to evaluate the factor structure of the six social attitudes scales using Structural Equation Modelling. In addition we tested the predictive as well as concurrent validity of the scales by establishing associations within the scales across time and their associations with indicators of voting behaviour and political interest. All six attitudes scales have good internal reliability and factorial stability, and external validity, they are robust and consistent over time. The measures also have wide applicability for researchers interested in social attitudes and behaviour in times of social change.