Have Socio-Economic Inequalities in Childhood Cognitive Test Scores Changed? A Secondary Analysis of Three British Birth Cohorts

研究一直表明，父母的社会和经济地位与孩子在认知能力测试中的得分之间存在联系。社会不平等现象明显，社会背景较差的儿童在认知测试中的表现一般较差。理论家们认为，最近出生的孩子在认知测试中往往比前几代出生的孩子表现得更好。拟议研究的总体目标是检查父母的社会经济地位和孩子在认知测试中的表现之间的关系在多大程度上发生了变化。英国是独一无二的，因为它有收集儿童数据并跟踪他们到成年的悠久传统。这些研究被称为出生队列研究，在拟议的研究中，我们将对其中三项研究进行高级统计分析。我们将使用三个出生队列研究的数据：1958年开始的国家儿童发展研究（NCDS）、1970年开始的英国队列研究（BCS）和2000年开始的千年队列研究（MCS）。与提议的工作相关的主要研究挑战有两个。这些研究中的数据主要不是为了进行比较而收集的，随着时间的推移，数据的收集方式和测量方式也发生了变化。第一个挑战是实际的挑战，即构建一套适当一致的衡量标准，并允许进行真正的比较。第二个挑战更多的是统计方面的。NCDS和BCS是较早的研究，它们是用相对直接的选择技术收集的，选择了一年中一周内出生的所有婴儿。MCS的设计更为复杂。孩子们被选中是因为他们生活在英国的不同地区，也因为他们出生的地区类型。与此同时，少数民族家庭较多地区的额外儿童也被选中。需要更复杂的统计方法来分析来自MCS的数据。目前还没有公认的方法来利用来自非传染性疾病和BCS的数据以及来自MCS的数据进行综合统计分析。为这个问题提供解决方案是第二个挑战。利用先进的统计思想，我们将寻求开发一种有效和实用的技术，对三个数据集进行综合统计分析。我们还将开发资源，帮助那些希望将MCS数据与其他复杂设计的研究相结合的研究人员（例如新的ESRC资助的生命研究和国际研究，如在澳大利亚长大）。

Research has consistently demonstrated that there is a relationship between parents' social and economic positions and their children's scores on tests which measure cognitive performance. There are marked social inequalities and children from less advantaged social backgrounds generally perform less well on cognitive tests. Theorists have suggested that children born more recently tend to perform better on cognitive tests than children born in earlier generations. The overall aim of the proposed research is to examine the extent to which the relationship between parents' socio-economic positions and their children's performance on cognitive tests has changed. The UK is unique because it has a long tradition of collecting data on children and following them into adulthood. These studies are known as birth cohort studies and in the proposed research we will undertake advanced statistical analyses of three of these studies.We will be using data from three birth cohort studies, the National Child Development Study (NCDS) which began in 1958, the British Cohort Study (BCS) which began in 1970, and the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which began in 2000. There are two main research challenges associated with the proposed work. The data in these studies was not primarily collected for making comparisons, and over the course of time there have been changes in how the data are collected and how things are measured. The first challenge is the practical one of constructing a set of measures that are suitably consistent, and that allow genuine comparisons to be made.The second challenge is more statistical. The NCDS and the BCS are older studies and they were collected using a relatively straightforward selection technique, which selected all of the babies born in one week of the year. The MCS has a more complex design. Children are selected because they live in different parts of the UK, and because of the type of area that they were born in. At the same time extra children from areas with high levels of ethnic minority families were also selected. More complex statistical methods are required to analyse data from the MCS. At the current time there is no recognised method for undertaking combined statistical analyses using data from the NCDS and the BCS along with data from the MCS. Providing a solution to this problem is the second challenge. Drawing on advanced statistical thinking we will seek to develop an effective and practicable technique to perform combined statistical analyses of the three datasets. We will also develop resources to help researchers who wish to combine data from the MCS with other studies with complex designs (examples include the new ESRC funded Life Study and international studies such as Growing up in Australia).