Call for papers: Statistical Challenges in Life Course Research

Life course researchers want to understand how health and well-being are influenced by biological, psychological, social, and environmental exposures occurring at different stages of development. The hypotheses posed by life course researchers are important ones, but rarely lend themselves to testing with randomised trials. Consequently, observational studies (particularly birth cohorts) will continue to play a critical role in this field, but there are challenges to maximizing the utility of these data:

• A single study may include a wide variety of exposures, including biological, psychological, social, and environmental measures. Many of these may not be directly observable; some may be nested in a hierarchical structure; others may not conform to well-behaved probability distributions.

• To evaluate life course hypotheses, these exposures often need to be characterised at different stages of development, and long term follow-up is needed for most outcomes. Thus life course research must rely on the variety of statistical methods used for longitudinal data analysis, and face the challenges inherent in longitudinal data.

The journal Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (LLCS) is now inviting papers for a special issue, Statistical Challenges in Life Course Research. In addition to meeting the Focus and Scope of LLCS, submitted papers should focus on statistical approaches to a problem encountered with life course and longitudinal data, and describe those methods in a manner that makes them more accessible to a broader, applied-research audience. Papers should include a clear justification of the problem, a conceptual explanation of the statistical method (in addition to a formal description), an example of how the method is applied, and suggestions for other areas where the approach might be useful.

Papers must conform to LLCS Author Guidelines.  The issue will be published in the spring of 2013, and all papers will undergo the normal review process. The deadline for submissions is 17:00, September 28^th, 2012. Please email your submission, or any other queries, directly to d.l.dahly@leeds.ac.uk.