Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors to this volume
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Studying individual development: problems and methods
- 2 Modeling individual and average human growth data from childhood to adulthood
- 3 Intraindividual variability in older adults' depression scores: some implications for developmental theory and longitudinal research
- 4 Now you see it, now you don't – some considerations on multiple regression
- 5 Differential development of health in a life-span perspective
- 6 Assessing change in a cohort-longitudinal study with hierarchical data
- 7 Statistical and conceptual models of ‘turning points’ in developmental processes
- 8 Qualitative analyses of individual differences in intra- individual change: examples from cognitive development
- 9 Application of correspondence analysis to a longitudinal study of cognitive development
- 10 Event-history models in social mobility research
- 11 Behavioral genetic concepts in longitudinal analyses
- 12 Genetic and environmental factors in a developmental perspective
- 13 Structural equation models for studying intellectual development
- 14 Longitudinal studies for discrete data based on latent structure models
- 15 Stability and change in patterns of extrinsic adjustment problems
- Index
5 - Differential development of health in a life-span perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors to this volume
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Studying individual development: problems and methods
- 2 Modeling individual and average human growth data from childhood to adulthood
- 3 Intraindividual variability in older adults' depression scores: some implications for developmental theory and longitudinal research
- 4 Now you see it, now you don't – some considerations on multiple regression
- 5 Differential development of health in a life-span perspective
- 6 Assessing change in a cohort-longitudinal study with hierarchical data
- 7 Statistical and conceptual models of ‘turning points’ in developmental processes
- 8 Qualitative analyses of individual differences in intra- individual change: examples from cognitive development
- 9 Application of correspondence analysis to a longitudinal study of cognitive development
- 10 Event-history models in social mobility research
- 11 Behavioral genetic concepts in longitudinal analyses
- 12 Genetic and environmental factors in a developmental perspective
- 13 Structural equation models for studying intellectual development
- 14 Longitudinal studies for discrete data based on latent structure models
- 15 Stability and change in patterns of extrinsic adjustment problems
- Index
Summary
The area of research suggested in the title covers both descriptive and analytical epidemiology. The challenge for descriptive studies is to demonstrate in a valid and representative manner the variance among individuals or groups of individuals in health-related issues at any one time, and to describe alterations in health status over extended periods of time. This makes it possible to study interindividual variation in longitudinal health patterns. In the analytical studies, the aim is to explain this variation in terms of environmental or genetic exposures. The focus in this presentation is on methods for empirical research in analytic epidemiology. Some alternative designs will briefly be discussed, but the main emphasis will be placed on data linkage studies employing data from a population-based medical birth register in Norway.
The analytical designs can be roughly divided into ecological studies, cross-sectional studies, and longitudinal studies (or cohort studies) of individuals or groups of individuals.
Let us first briefly look at how, in the lack of individual data, ecological approaches have been used to examine differential development of health in a life-span perspective. Mortality has a long tradition for being used as an indicator of health when one has to rely on vital statistics or other routinely collected health data. The relative development of mortality (be it crude, disease specific, or age and sex specific) over time can be of interest to use as the basis for comparison between areas or populations.
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- Information
- Problems and Methods in Longitudinal ResearchStability and Change, pp. 95 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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