Kneale, D;
Patalay, P;
Thomas, J;
Khatwa, M;
Stansfield, C;
Fitzsimons, E;
(2018)
A systematic approach to mapping longitudinal data usage: Reflections on tracking Millennium Cohort Study activity.
F1000Research
, 7
(1559)
10.12688/f1000research.15990.1.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Millennium Cohort Study is the youngest of the UK’s four national birth cohort studies, but the only study (to our knowledge) where a systematic approach to exploring data usage has been undertaken. METHODS: In this paper we: (i) explore previous exercises and provide justification for our approach; (ii) share headline findings of our research, (iii) outline the challenges of intersecting systematic review methods with survey design methods; and (iv) discuss the implications for future survey design as well as for future exercises tracking survey data usage. All of the results were obtained through undertaking systematic searches across 30 databases which generated over 4000 results. We then searched these records, first on title and abstract and then on the full text and extracted data on studies that fell within our specific areas of interest. RESULTS: A total of 481 studies were identified as using MCS data in novel analyses. Among these studies, measures that have been collected across sweeps—diet, BMI, SDQ and screen time—are all comparatively well used. Data that were collected from the child’s own reports (e.g. friendships and feelings) have seldom been utilised in comparison to data collected through parental reports and using validated tools (e.g. SDQ). Imposing thresholds on data was found to be problematic in some cases, for example for BMI, where a number of different thresholds for overweight and obesity were in use. The use of different thresholds can lead to substantial differences in the results obtained. CONCLUSIONS: Longitudinal consistency in measures is key to identifying change over time, and the review helped map the degree of consistency in measures, and their utility. The findings shaped decisions around inclusion of variables in MCS7 (age 17 years), as well as the way in which existing data were deposited.
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