Invaluable snapshot of the population
It was launched in 1976 to examine whether behavioural problems such as childhood aggression and social withdrawal could predict future mental health problems or serious social and health difficulties. Countless grant applications and 34 years later, the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project continues, and the original child participants are now adults – many with kids of their own.
The study, the first to investigate the impact of behavioural patterns over decades, has proved a gold mine for researchers. It has generated 55 peer-reviewed papers, with more under review, for Concordia scientists and North American peers who’ve asked to collaborate using their figures.
“This study has been surprisingly far-ranging,” says Lisa Serbin, a psychology professor and a scientist at the Centre for Research in Human Development (CRDH) who joined the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project in 1981. “Nobody thought this study would last over 30 years, but we keep thinking of new questions we can answer with this cohort.”
Professor Emeritus Alex Schwartzman and Jane Ledingham, a former Concordian who is now at the University of Ottawa, were the first investigators to lead the project. It has continued smoothly for so long thanks to the support of Claude Senneville, a research coordinator at the CRDH.
In total, the research team screened 4 000 children from French-language public schools. Participants were recruited from low socio-economic urban backgrounds in Quebec. Over 1 000 were retained with follow-up interviews at three-year intervals, while further information about their histories was garnered through public databases. When the study began, participants were in Grade 1, Grade 4 and Grade 7. Most are now in their early 40s.
Disadvantaged Quebec residents were selected as the cohort to ensure continuity. “This demographic does not generally move out of the region,” says Serbin, who is also Concordia University Research Chair in Human Development.
She stresses that participants have been invaluable in providing a snapshot of the larger population. “Name any problematic outcome and chances are it will be manifested more frequently in an inner- city, lower income group. To obtain that kind of perspective from the general population would require screening millions of people,” she says.
Serbin’s most recent investigation to use data from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project has just been published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development. She examined whether childhood aggression, social withdrawal and low socio-economic status could affect adult wellbeing.
Her conclusions? Disadvantaged kids are more likely to drop out of high school, become adolescent parents and raise their own children in poverty. Those diagnosed as having behavioural problems as children, particularly aggression, were most at risk for adult hardships.
Of the 328 women and 222 men of the cohort who had become parents: 22.6% of mothers and 22.5% of fathers had not completed their secondary education by age 25. That translated into 35% of households being poor.
“This study confirms that individual and environmental factors have a direct and enduring impact from childhood into parenthood,” says Serbin.
While the long-range study has shown that poverty breeds poverty, Serbin remains optimistic. “Cohort by cohort, we have seen improvements,” she says. “Education levels have risen. Where the parents of our participants might have ended their education in Grade 8, over three-quarters of this second generation did eventually graduate from high school. Such improved education levels make all the difference.”
Partners in research:
This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture.
About the study:
“Predicting family poverty and other disadvantaged conditions for child rearing from childhood aggression and social withdrawal: A 30-year longitudinal study,” published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development, was authored by Lisa A. Serbin, Caroline E. Temcheff, Jessica M. Cooperman, Dale M. Stack and Alex E. Schwartzman of Concordia University and Jane Ledingham of the University of Ottawa.
Related links:
• Cited International Journal of Behavioral Development study
• Centre for Research in Human Development
• Concordia University