Delivering the birth component of Life Study: a longitudinal pilot for the national probability sample

一项出生队列研究跟踪了同一批婴儿的一生，以更多地了解儿童的早期社会，情感和身体发育以及他们的家庭和更广泛的环境如何影响他们未来的健康和福祉。这些特殊类型的研究使人们深入了解早期生活对所谓的生命历程的影响。自1946年以来，英国已经建立了一系列这样的队列研究。这项被提议的队列研究（生活研究）样本量大，设计新颖，是一种独特而特殊的方式，可以发现早期生活经历对以后的童年和成年生活的重要性。这项研究旨在招募来自英国各地的约8万名妇女及其伴侣，其中6万人处于怀孕期，2万人处于婴儿出生后。这种性质的双重设计提供了显着的科学效益，促进详细的调查，以及在英国人口中推广研究结果的能力。这项研究奖的申请具体涉及为后一组设计和进行纵向试点研究-一个被称为生命研究出生部分的国家概率样本。该试点将测试婴儿出生后与父母联系的最佳方法、所取得的反应以及在孩子出生后的第一年内与家人保持的联系。它还将提供一个“测试床”的数据，可用于产生一个“beta测试”版本的综合数据集-将生命研究中出生和怀孕部分的数据结合起来，使研究界能够随时获得这些数据。生命研究将有助于确定环境的哪些方面在最广泛的意义上保护儿童，最大限度地提高他们的生活机会，以及保护儿童的方式。操作。它还将帮助我们了解哪些方面可能增加社会和经济脆弱性。我们希望了解早期生活中社会、经济、环境和生物影响之间的相互作用，认识到这需要了解父母的生活以及更广泛的家庭和社会。生活研究将在整个童年和成年生活中跟踪所有儿童及其家庭，以便我们可以看到他们如何成长和发展以及他们的家庭环境如何变化。这将通过多种方式实现，包括在研究开始时获得同意，以链接到未来的常规健康和婴儿和父母/护理人员的其他记录。科学家和其他人从这些大型研究中了解到很多关于我们如何帮助儿童获得良好的生活开端，改善他们的生活机会，未来的幸福和幸福。收集的信息将是匿名的，这样家庭的隐私可以得到保护，然后提供给研究人员，以确保我们从中获得最大的好处。这项研究的一个重要特点是能够将生活研究一代与类似的特殊英国队列研究中从前几代收集的信息进行比较。我们将确保参与研究的家庭了解研究的进展并能接触到早期的发现我们还将确保英国和国外的其他科学家、政策制定者和所有公众也能听到生命研究的发现。我们一直与来自不同背景的公众合作，帮助我们规划研究，并确保研究能够回答父母认为重要的问题。

A birth cohort study follows the same babies throughout their lives to understand more about how a child's early social, emotional and physical development and their family and wider environment influence their future health and well-being. These special types of studies give insights into early life influences on what is called the life course. The UK has, since 1946, established a series of such cohort studies. The proposed cohort (Life Study), which has a large sample size and an innovative design represents a unique and special way to find out how early life experiences matter for later childhood and adult life.The study aims to recruit about 80,000 women and their partners from across the UK, 60,000 in pregnancy and 20,000 after the birth of their baby. A dual design of this nature offers significant scientific benefits, facilitating detailed investigations together with ability to generalise findings across the UK population. This application for a research award relates specifically to the design and conduct of a longitudinal pilot study for the latter group - a national probability sample referred to as the birth component of Life Study. This pilot will test the best approach to contacting parents after the birth of their baby, the response achieved and the contact retained with families across the first year of the child's life. It will also provide a 'test bed' of data that can be used to produce a 'beta test' version of the integrated dataset - combining data from the birth and pregnancy components of Life Study in a way which makes them readily accessible to the research community.Life Study will help identify what aspects of the environment in its broadest sense protect children and maximise their life chances and the ways in which that protection operates. It will also help us understand what aspects may increase social and economic vulnerability. We wish to understand the interplay between social, economic, environmental and biological influences in early life, recognising that this needs understanding of parents' lives and the wider family and society too.Life Study will follow all the children and their families throughout childhood and adult life so that we can see how they grow and develop and how their family circumstances change. This will be achieved in a number of ways including obtaining consent at the beginning of the study to link to future routine health and other records of the baby and parents/care-givers.Scientists and others learn a lot from these large studies about how we can help children to get a good start in life and improve their life chances, future well being and happiness. The information collected will be anonymised so that the privacy of families can be protected and then made available to researchers to ensure we get the most benefit from it. An important feature of the study will be the ability to compare the Life Study generation with information collected from earlier generations in similar special British cohort studies.We will make sure that families taking part are informed about the progress of the study and have access to the early findings. We will also ensure that other scientists, in the UK and abroad, policymakers and all members of the public also get to hear about Life Study findings. We have been working with members of the public from a wide range of backgrounds to help us plan the Study and ensure that it can answer questions that parents think are important.