Opening up pathways: reconsidering longitudinal health research.

ABSTRACT

This article engages with a common model of 'pathway' in longitudinal health research. National studies of child health and development are taken as 'signature' research into how life pathways can be tracked by social scientists. The work of the philosopher Lingis is used to show how contemporary social theory can enlarge our propositions about life pathways and how they are shaped. No specific longitudinal health studies are critiqued, rather the analysis is at a conceptual level aiming to highlight new ways of thinking about events in time, forces, and lived experience.

KEY WORDS

longitudinal research; pathways; cohort; forces; Lingis; sociology

Introduction

One common way of picturing longitudinal research is by the metaphor of pathways. Any social group will display a remarkable variety of routes and pathways through adult life: Johnny ends up a drug addict, Tony a successful businessman; Jenny is twice divorced and depressive, Elizabeth a university lecturer, and so on. Longitudinal research aims to track these pathways: a cohort, group, or entity is followed forward in time, data being collected at regular points. Then, analysis of longitudinal data works from an endpoint back, using the collected series to attempt to provide a dynamic understanding of the social processes that shape pathways. Longitudinal research, without doubt, does have advantages over cross-sectional research in answering such questions. As Hakim puts it, 'the longitudinal study is unique in its ability to answer questions about causes and consequences and hence to provide a basis for substantiated explanatory theory' (1987:86).

However, it is equally clear that longitudinal research is difficult and has its own problems. As Ruspini puts it in her excellent summary, longitudinal analysis is simultaneously a necessity, a luxury and a riddle for the social sciences: