UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Parental separation and adult psychological distress: evidence for the 'reduced effect' hypothesis?

Lacey, RE; Bartley, M; Pikhart, H; Stafford, M; Cable, N; Coleman, L; (2012) Parental separation and adult psychological distress: evidence for the 'reduced effect' hypothesis? Longitudinal and Life Course Studies , 3 (3) 359 - 368. Green open access

[thumbnail of 1355608.pdf]
Preview
PDF
1355608.pdf
Available under License : See the attached licence file.

Download (478kB)

Abstract

Parental separation has been linked to increased likelihood of reporting psychological distress in adulthood, but relatively little is known about how this association may have changed over time. One hypothesis is that as the experience of separation has become more common, the association with psychological distress will reduce (the ‘reduced effect’ hypothesis). Previous evidence using the British birth cohorts does not support this hypothesis, but past studies have several limitations which we aim to address. In this study we measure parental separation from birth, account for missing data and statistically test cohort differences using data from two British birth cohorts – the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS). Despite these methodological improvements, we find little evidence to support the ‘reduced effect’ hypothesis: parental separation was associated with a similarly increased likelihood of reporting psychological distress in adulthood for men and women in both cohorts.

Type: Article
Title: Parental separation and adult psychological distress: evidence for the 'reduced effect' hypothesis?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: http://www.llcsjournal.org/index.php/llcs/article/...
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Epidemiology and Public Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1355608
Downloads since deposit
796Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item