Elsevier

Academic Pediatrics

Volume 21, Issue 1, January–February 2021, Pages 43-52
Academic Pediatrics

Children's Health Issues
What Research Questions Should the Next Generation of Birth Cohort Studies Address? An International Delphi Study of Experts

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2020.03.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

Birth cohort studies (BCS) have generated a wealth of invaluable basic scientific and policy-relevant information on a wide range of issues in child health and development. This study sought to explore what research questions are currently a priority for the next generation of BCS using a 3-round Delphi survey of interdisciplinary experts.

Methods

Twenty-four (Round I, N = 17; Round II, N = 21; Round III, N = 18) experts across a wide range of fields (eg, psychology, public health, and maternal/child health) agreed to participate. In Round I, the expert panel was invited to freely respond to the question, “what are the key scientific questions future birth cohort studies should address?” Content analysis of answers was used to identify 47 questions for rating on perceived importance by the panel in Round II and consensus-achieving questions were identified. Questions that did not reach consensus in Round II were posed again for expert re-rating in Round III.

Results

Twenty six of 47 questions reached consensus in Round II, with an additional 6 reaching consensus in Round III. Consensus-achieving questions rated highly on importance spanned a number of topics, including environmental effects on child development, intergenerational transmission of disadvantage, and designing BCS to inform intervention strategies.

Conclusion

Investigating the effects of family/environmental factors and social disadvantage on a child's development should be prioritized in designing future BCS. The panel also recommended that future BCS are designed to inform intervention strategies.

Section snippets

Sample

Purposive sampling was used to identify suitable candidates for the expert panel. Evidence for Better Lives (EBLS) consortium members were consulted and invited to suggest individuals they believed would be suitable for participation. The EBLS consortium is a group of 15 academics from the United Kingdom and low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) who form the leadership of on an 8-site BCS with sites in Jamaica, Vietnam, Ghana, Romania, Philippines, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Pakistan. A

Panel Members

Panel sizes of 15 to 30 are considered optimal for Delphi surveys14 and the current study recruited between 17 and 21 (Round I [N = 17]; Round II [N = 21]; Round III [N = 18]) experts from the 24 who initially expressed interest. Table 1 provides a detailed overview of the samples across the three rounds (Table 1) and indicates demographic and research profile diversity. For example, 17 experts (8 males; mean age = 59.12, standard deviation = 9.92; 15 senior academics and 2 clinicians) from 10

Discussion

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Delphi study to identify key research priorities for the next generation of BCS, using opinions from an interdisciplinary expert panel. Consensus-achieving questions that were rated as high priority spanned several topics, including: the role of the child's family; social adversity; identifying targets for intervention strategies; and the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

Most of the consensus-achieving and high-rated questions have

Conclusions

Our study is the first Delphi to identify the key questions that future BCS should address, using the opinion of experts from both HIC and LMIC. It is hoped the findings from this study will be utilized by researchers to help develop a priori research questions and hypotheses when designing new BCS, and new waves and substudies of existing BCS. The expert panel prioritized research questions that, while having been previously investigated in BCS, remain important and incompletely understood.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences SFA ODA Global Challenges Fund for funding the current research. In addition, we are grateful to Dr Charlotte Hanlon, Dr Jena Hamadani, Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke, Professor Guenther Fink, Dr Inácio Crochmore, Professor Jane Fisher, Professor Lynne Murray, Professor Kathy Sylva, Dr Santiago Cueto, Professor Theresa Betancourt, and the other anonymous experts who formed our expert panel.

Financial

References (43)

  • E Russell et al.

    Hair cortisol as a biological marker of chronic stress: current status, future directions and unanswered questions

    Psychoneuroendocrinology

    (2012)
  • C Lu et al.

    Risk of poor development in young children in low-income and middle-income countries: an estimation and analysis at the global, regional, and country level

    Lancet Glob Health

    (2016)
  • ME Wadsworth

    Birth cohort studies

  • S Brandstetter et al.

    KUNO-Kids birth cohort study: rationale, design, and cohort description

    Mol Cell Pediatr

    (2019)
  • N Wiles et al.

    Fetal growth and childhood behavioral problems: results from the ALSPAC cohort

    Am J Epidemiol

    (2006)
  • A McCaw-Binns et al.

    Impact of the Jamaican birth cohort study on maternal, child and adolescent health policy and practice

    Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol

    (2010)
  • J Golding et al.

    Sources of data for a longitudinal birth cohort

    Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol

    (2009)
  • J Nicholson et al.

    Australian and New Zealand birth cohort studies: breadth, quality and contributions

    J Paediatr Child Health

    (2004)
  • S Gracie et al.

    All our babies cohort study: recruitment of a cohort to predict women at risk of preterm birth through the examination of gene expression profiles and the environment

    BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

    (2010)
  • W Shih et al.

    Data-driven vs. hypothesis-driven research: making sense of big data

    Acad Manag Proc

    (2016)
  • R Kitchin

    Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts

    Big Data Soc

    (2014)
  • Cited by (0)

    The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

    View full text