In 1972 a researcher in a small city at the bottom of New Zealand set out to track the development of more than 1,000 newborn babies and their health and behavior over the next 50 years, but didn't realize that the research would become one of the world's largest.
More than 1,300 peer-reviewed research papers, reports and books have been produced by the study, which did not stop at three years.
The 50th anniversary of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Study is this week. The study has some limitations from a domestic point of view, but it does capture a group of people who have grown up in all sorts of households.
The study was founded in 1972 by Dr Phil A. Silva and is now under the directorship of professor Richie Poulton, who will be 50 years old next year.
Every few years since the members were born, they have returned to the University of Otago research centre in Dunedin to have their mental and physical health examined. Everything from dental to cardiovascular health is covered.
The real heroes of the study are the study members. They only do it for one reason, which is that they think it might help other people.
The study members were becoming teenagers and the work led by ProfTerrie Moffitt evolved into a paper on antisocial behavior in adolescents, a theory that has become the most cited theory in criminology.
Many countries use a 1993 paper as a justification for changing their juvenile justice system to be more supportive of young offenders.
The data shows that child maltreatment can lead to higher levels of inflammation and an elevated risk of depression.
Children exposed to adverse psychosocial experiences have enduring emotional, immune, and metabolic abnormality that contribute to explaining their elevated risk for age-related disease, according to the paper.
The researchers needed to keep up with new life stages as the years evolved.
When they were teenagers, it was drugs and alcohol, risky sex, and law breaking, but they grew out of it. We had to become experts on how to pick a partner, when to have a baby and how to have children. Now that they're going to be in their 50s, we're studying how they prepare for old age.
The research will shift to reflect changes in society, such as what makes communities and societies stick together, and why, all over the globe, they are becoming unstuck.
We haven't got a good measure of social cohesion yet, but we have a lot of information.
The team will now develop a method for understanding what underpins socially cohesive behavior.
The last assessment was taken just before the Pandemic hit. Moffitt says that the team contacted the members in 2021, to interview them about their experience of the pandemic and their plans for getting the vaccine, with that data due to be released soon.
A high retention rate, a multidisciplinary approach, and testing make the Dunedin study different from studies overseas.
It's a very rare combo, the Holy Trinity in my mind, to make us the best study of our type in the world.
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