Conducting Longitudinal Research: Practical lessons from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health
Special Issue of Multiple Research Approaches
Volume 1 Issue 2 December 2007
ii+134 pages ISBN 978-0-9775742-9-2
Editors:
Deborah Loxton, Julie Byles, Annette Dobson and Wendy Brown
Women's Health Australia
Research Centre for Gender, Health and Ageing
University of Newcastle, NSW
Longitudinal research provides data from the same participants over a set time period and as such permits causal pathways (for example to health, illness and mortality), to be determined. There is a new emphasis on accountability in the public health sector. Longitudinal research can help those professionals seeking to implement longitudinal style research in order to meet these new demands.
Conducting Longitudinal Research will help both novice and experienced researchers, from academia, government departments, private and public sectors to establish and conduct a longitudinal study. Offering direction and advice concerning the efficient conduct of longitudinal research studies, Conducting Longitudinal Research fills a gap in the research methodology literature.
Internationally, longitudinal research has become increasing important to both the academic community and state policy-makers as it is an important way to examine causal relationships - for example, understanding critical issues associated with ageing.
While the famous 'Seven Up' study is probably the best known, longitudinal studies can include many thousands of participants (eg, The UK 'Million Women' study). The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), which began in 1996, has 40,000 participants who are surveyed every three years.
Conducting Longitudinal Research includes topics from the researchers' experiences:
- Strategies to encourage participants to remain in the study (often for decades)
- Establishing succession planning for key personnel, and
- Handling very large volumes of data.
Conducting Longitudinal Research is a practical guide to the development and successful management of longitudinal studies written by researchers and personnel who have been running the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health for over ten years.
In plain language, each chapter provides the reader with a thorough examination of the topic, illustrative case studies and real-life examples, timelines for project development and implementation and a chapter summary of the main points for quick reference.
Conducting Longitudinal Research can be read from cover to cover, although it is designed so that each section stands alone, allowing readers a readily accessible guide to overcoming the diverse challenges that occur during longitudinal research. For example:
- When a participant calls the study team and asks for help with a health problem, what procedure should be used?
- How should the study team deal with angry callers?
- What measures can be set in place to avoid data loss?
- How should the research team ensure that participants are not lost to follow-up?
Researchers establishing a longitudinal study, or who have queries about the conduct of such research - from academic research centres, government agencies or private firms - will benefit from the practicalities of undertaking longitudinal research outlined in this book.
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