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Human Resources for Longitudinal Studies: Matching people to skills and tasks
Penny Warner-Smith
Research Centre for Gender and Health, University of Newcastle, NSW
Deborah Loxton
Wendy J Brown
Abstract
This paper describes the practical tasks that longitudinal studies involve, the skills necessary to complete those tasks, and the organisational issues that are pertinent to conducting longitudinal research.
We first focus on the decision about whether to conduct the study in-house, or to out-source part or all of the work. We discuss the desirable qualities of the people responsible for carrying out the project tasks, and the importance of creatively matching the work to the skills and experience of the people in the organisation. The critical issues of continuity and succession planning are then addressed before we finish with a brief discussion of organisational structure.
Throughout the paper, examples from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) are used to illustrate the issues at hand. The paper is one of a suite of eleven papers which address the practicalities of running a longitudinal study.
Keywords
longitudinal studies, human resources
References
Adamson L and Chojenta C (2007) Developing relationships and retaining participants in a longitudinal study, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Adamson L and Graves A (2007) Cohort management: Developing and maintaining participant databases in longitudinal studies, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Byles J, Dobson A, Brown W and Bryson L (2007) Getting started: 'preparing the ground' and 'planting the vines' for longitudinal research, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Chojenta C, Byles J, Loxton D and Mooney R (2007) Communication and dissemination of longitudinal study findings, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Chojenta C, Mooney R and Warner-Smith P (2007) Accessing and disseminating longitudinal data: Protocols and policies, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Graves A, Ball J and Fraser E (2007) Data management: The building blocks of clean, accurate and reliable longitudinal datasets, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches.
Soupourmas F, Ironmonger D, Brown P and Warner-Smith P (2005) Testing the Practicality of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) Questionnaire vs. a Beeper and Booklet (B&B) Questionnaire in a Random-Time Experience-Sampling Method (RTESM) Context, Annals of Leisure Research 8 (2-3): 142-152.
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