Audio transcript (edited)

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Welcome everybody to today’s webinar.  Today we’re looking at ‘A Child’s and Family Services Guide to the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.  My name is Dr Jasmine B. MacDonald.  I’m a research fellow and co-manager of the Child Family Community Information Exchange here at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.  I’d like to start by acknowledging the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nations who are the traditional owners of the lands in Melbourne where I’m speaking to you from today.  I’d also like to pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and I want to extend that respect to Elders and Indigenous Australians joining us in the webinar today. 

So, before I introduce my guest, I have some housekeeping to share with you.  So, this is a pre-recorded interview and that means we won’t be taking any live questions today.  The recording of today’s webinar will be available in about two weeks on the AIFS website, and the best way to find out about recordings or upcoming webinars is via the AIFS newsletters, AIFS news.  But you can also go to our website and look under the webinars banner, and you’ll find the available recordings there.  Today we have an accompanying resource information sheet for you that you’ll find in your handout section, go to webinar and this links to the LSAC website and also some of the really useful and interesting snapshots or findings from the study. 

Finally, in terms of housekeeping, at the end of the webinar a feedback survey is going to pop up and we would really appreciate it if you would just take a little bit of time to let us know what you thought about the webinar and provide some feedback.  We use that information to make sure we’re covering topics and having conversations in a way that’s useful for you, so please take the opportunity to do that if you can. 

Okay, now to the fun part, today I’m joined by Dr Lisa Mundy who is the AIFS Program Lead for the Growing up in Australia Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, or as we fondly refer to it here as LSAC.  Lisa is a developmental psychologist specialising in life course epidemiology.  The focus of her research has been understanding the psychological behavioural and biological underpinnings of mental health with the ultimate aim of informing new approaches to prevention and early intervention.  Lisa has a particular interest in the interface between health and education. 

Prior to heading up LSAC, Lisa was the program manager of the Child to Adolescent Transition Study at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.  So, we are really lucky to have Lisa as part of our team here at AIFS and I’m especially lucky to have you here with me to have a chat today.  Welcome, Lisa. 

Lisa Mundy: Thanks so much, Jasmine.  Thanks for the lovely introduction and really lovely to be here.  Thank you. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: So, a very good place to start is, Lisa, what is LSAC?

Lisa Mundy: It’s a really good question.  So, LSAC’s a really exciting and really unique study based in Australia and it’s been following over 10,000 children and their families for the last 20 years.  It’s a longitudinal study.  So, what that means is that we’ve been following the same children over the last 20 years, and their families, and really understanding what it’s like to grow up and to develop in Australia.  So, as I say, we’ve been following 10,000 children and there’s been two groups of children within that 10,000.  So, we started with 5,000 in what we called the baby cohort, so they were as the name suggests, zero to one when we started.  Then there were 5,000 children in what we call the kinder cohort and so they were four to five when we started. 

So, now those children and babies, are now moving from adolescents into young adulthood.  So, we’re heading back out into the field later this year and those children will now be as I say adolescents, so 19 turning 20 years for the baby cohort and 23 – 24 years as the kinder cohort.  So, we’re really looking forward to continuing to follow these children as they become young adults and understand what’s going on in their world now. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: That’s huge.  So many participants over a long period of time.  That’s really powerful.  But it does make me wonder, how do you run a project like that?  At a practical sense, what does this look like?

Lisa Mundy: Yeah, it’s a really good question.  So, it’s a really huge team effort, like lots of partnerships.  So, currently, the study is run in partnership between AIFS, the Australian Institute of Family Studies where we’re based, and the Department of Social Services or DSS as we tend to refer to them.  So, DSS is the funder to the study and we at AIFS are running that study.  We work really closely with our fieldwork providers.  For wave 10, which is the next wave we’re about to launch, that will be Roy Morgan are our fieldwork providers, so we’re working really closely with them.  They provide all the interviewers and the people who are going out in the field to meet participants and our families who take part in the study.  So, lots and lots of people. 

We also have an advisory group who are really important and they advise on all aspects of the study, so the scientific advisory group.  So, thinking about the content that we put into the study, we have lots of advisors and consultants across research and academia as well as government and policy space.  It’s really a broad study.  So, LSAC, it’s a really, really lovely study to work on because basically if you’re interested in it, LSAC is probably measuring it.  So, we capture a lot of data across things like mental health, wellbeing, families, relationships with friends, things like bullying.  Media use is a really big one.  Obviously, that’s changed so much in the last 20 years and this generation is growing up with technology now in a different way to previous generations.  Things like employment now, volunteering, education, health.  Basically, you name it, it’s probably in LSAC somewhere. 

As well as the information that we collect from the young people themselves, we also collect information from their parents and also, along the way we’ve collected it from their teachers as well, the early child educators, and then the interview in the home has also kind of provided some information as well along the way.  So, it’s a really important study in that it’s not just one person or the child saying how they feel, which is often the case in child and adolescent research, it’s often the parent’s data that we rely on.  So, that’s what makes LSAC really important, is having all of the different people informing the study and providing that really important data. 

Then we also are really lucky in that we’re able to link with some really important databases like NAPLAN, so in terms of the educational outcomes for young people, so we’ve been able to link that in across grades three, five, seven and nine.  We also link with MBS, the Medicare Benefit Schedule, and the PBS, the Pharmaceutical Benefit Schedule.  So, that means we’ve got some really great complex data to really understand what it’s like to grow up, what are the factors that support positive development.  But also, what are some of the factors that get in the way and that hinder young people from growing up in the best possible way that they can, and their families. 

Then the really exciting thing from where I am, like kind of having a psychology background, is really being able to then understand well, where can we intervene, what can we do about this and how can we make some changes, what are the targets where we should be intervening earlier in development to make sure that all kids are on the best possible path they can be as they make those transitions from infancy to childhood to adolescents to young adulthood.  Then hopefully, now we will be following them as they make the really important transitions into more adult roles and settling into employment, partners and eventually having kids and things like that.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Wow, that’s really cool.  I love having this conversation with you and seeing the enthusiasm and the excitement that you have for this study.  That’s really cool.

Lisa Mundy: I love this study. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Clearly a data nerd.  Respect.  While you were explaining that, and you really touched on the practical implications of this data and also as you were speaking before you said, I was thinking the same thing.  It’s really complex to draw all this data together.  You have a psychology background and so do I, for us longitudinal study’s something that we’re kind of familiar with.  But if people maybe don’t have that exposure or understanding of what it is, could you talk through what we mean by longitudinal study and why it’s a powerful method?

Lisa Mundy: Yes, of course.  So, longitudinal means that we’ve been following the same children throughout the study.  So, for LSAC, over the last 20 years we’ve run nine waves of data collection and they’ve typically happened every other year, so every two years.  Over COVID, COVID caused disruption for LSAC in the way that it disrupted pretty much everything else.  So, we ended up -

Jasmine B. MacDonald: LSAC’s not special.  Yes.

Lisa Mundy: No, exactly.  So, we ended up doing a split wave, so there were two parts to wave nine that was in the field, and that really allowed us to look at what was happening for young people earlier in the pandemic and then later in the pandemic, so across 2020 and 2021.  But in terms of – then as I say, we’re going into the field for wave 10, or going out to meet the young people again towards the end of this year, like 2023, so that’s a really exciting phase for us now is kind of doing that preparation work.  So, in terms of the value of a longitudinal study and why it’s so important and why I get so excited, is because we are following the same children over time.  So, we really get to see what happens for them as they’re growing up, and what’s happening for their families. 

That’s the other important thing about LSAC as I mentioned, because we’re collecting data from other and information from other people as well, we really can build a picture of what life is like for the child and young person themselves, as well as their family, their community and even to an extent kind of understanding the impact of some of the broader society as well.  So, the value of having that longitudinal data is that you have the kind of data, you can really look at those patterns that happen over time and then really understand what are some of those risks and protective factors because you’re tracking the same children. 

So, you can kind of look at one point in time and then effectively what we do is kind of almost control for what happened before that so that then we can really unpack and disentangle well what actually is driving that outcome.  So, maybe it might be mental health.  So, for example, looking at the role of social media and mental health.  It’s like, is social media, does it cause poor mental health or is it young people who are more like you have higher levels of emotional problems are more likely to be online.  So, you can really disentangle that because you know what happened for those young people, you know what their patterns of emotional behaviour, emotional symptoms were leading up to them starting to go online, and then you can really disentangle that moving forward. 

Similarly with COVID and things like that, we’ve really been able to look at what happens when those big disruptors like COVID come and to be able to unpack what is the impact of that, and that’s one of the things that we found is that COVID for these young people really did impact their mental health and their wellbeing.  So, that’s like really important – because we had the prior data, we could understand what their mental health was like prior to COVID and then really understand that disrupted effect of the COVID pandemic. 

So, yeah, so the value of longitudinal data is really important.  Then coupled with being able to link with some of those what we call administrative databases, like the NAPLAN and Medicare databases, means that it’s a really, really powerful, really amazing study that can answer so many questions.  It’s so important for Australia in terms of being evidence based to inform policy and program development and has done over the last 20 years, and that’s something that we’re really passionate about doing moving forward, is really making sure that LSAC has impact and actually does help improve outcomes for children and young people and their families growing up today, basically. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Yeah, that’s really cool.  I am really interested when you’re talking about collecting data from multiple people within a family system, not just the children and young people.  This may be a conversation for another day, it might be off on a tangent so feel free to tell me that, Lisa, that’s fine.  But it does make me wonder, often as researchers we’re looking for triangulation, we want to hear similar things from different sources.  But what do you do when parents and young people are saying different things, like the data’s diverging, as the program lead, what do you do with that?

Lisa Mundy: Yeah, it’s a really good question.  As someone who’s worked in research for a long time, it’s definitely a challenge.  Particularly when you’re designing these studies, you obviously want to make sure that we set them up so that we’re only asking for kind of the smallest number of questions that we can as well, because we really value the family’s, the young people’s time.  So, we don’t want to be in their house for the whole day, like that.  So, we have to think really carefully about who’s the best person to ask these questions to.  So, it’s a really good question, particularly for a longitudinal study like LSAC. 

So, as I mentioned, we started when the children were babies, four to five years of age.  So, that age it’s obviously, from babies obviously you can’t collect any data, minimal what you can get from a four to five year old.  But we know that from around eight years of age, kids become quite – like, if you ask the right questions in the right way and provide the support and help them understand what the questions mean, then young people can start answering questions from around eight, nine, definitely 10 years of age.  So, that’s when we start bringing in more of that child information.  Because that’s really important in terms of understanding what’s life like actually for them. 

We’ve actually done one of our technical report papers that’s coming out really soon on this topic.  So, for anyone who’s a real data nerd who wants more, then I definitely will make sure that we post that.  It’s not out just yet, but it will be really soon.  So, we have really looked at this question about different respondents and the reliability of that.  In short, what we know from the current board of literature is that parents are probably not so good at saying about emotional problems.  That tends to be the young person themselves is a much more reliable informant of that.  But behaviour problems typically parents do know about because they tend to be the things that they get rung up by the school, or hear about through their friends, or obviously just observing. 

So, I guess there's different kind of value of different informants about different things.  So, thinking about the age and stage of the child and where they’re at in development, thinking about what they can realistically answer and then thinking about where’s the most reliable informant, that's kind of the challenge I guess in terms of putting together the questionnaires.  Then in terms of analysis and thinking about what does this mean and what do we use, it’s all of those factors come into that end as well.  There are ways of doing what we call composite and blend those together, or you might look at both and just consider them as almost two different outcomes or two almost different entities, that sort of thing.  But definitely a really important consideration in terms of longitudinal study, well in terms of not just longitudinal studies but work with children.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Absolutely.  Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.  I'm hearing the descriptions you have there and thinking that there's some interesting takeaways there for practice as well as who can you bring into the conversation, hear different voices, what’s the whole is greater than the sum of its parts kind of situation. 

Lisa Mundy: Yeah, exactly.  I think that's right.  I think it is about putting all of those different voices together to build the picture and understanding the different, like the way that plays out in terms of development.  One of the previous studies I worked on, we had a big focus on puberty and pubertal development.  It’s like earlier on parents are pretty good informants of that, but then as development goes on, parents really don’t know much and so understanding the age of the participants, or the young person that you've got in front of you, and how you build the picture of the information that you want, that you need to collect to kind of think about, it’s really important decisions. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: That makes heap of sense in terms of that developmental changes of parents being such an important part of a child’s world and then post-puberty maybe having less direct information. 

Lisa Mundy: Yes.  Exactly.  That's one of the really important transitions.  I mean, that's one of the ways that LSAC and studies like LSAC can really shine a light on some of those really important transitions as well.  So, that’s a big passion area of mine that transition from child to adolescence for lots of reasons, and understanding how you can support the role of parents in that transition whilst allowing the young person to have their level of autonomy and agency develop across those years as well. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: For sure.  I think it would be nice if we could just briefly touch on various topics that you have covered in this study.  So far, we’ve got social media, we have COVID, we’ve actually covered a bunch, but are there any other kind of areas you’d like to highlight to say, hey we’ve also got snapshots of data in their spaces as well? 

Lisa Mundy: Yeah, definitely.  As part of the work we do here at AIFS, we produce a number of what we call snapshots which are basically a summary of some of the research findings that we’re doing.  They’re across a whole range of topics and they’re available on our website.  As I say, a lot of breadth, so there's lots of different topics that we can cover.  Maybe just to give a bit of a highlight, I might just go back actually to the COVID and young adult one, that's one that came out earlier this year, just to talk a little but more about that, and then we can go on a little bit of a tour around some other topics as well. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Excellent.

Lisa Mundy: Sounds good.  Great.  So, as I mentioned, what we found, the young people were in their early 20s basically when we were looking at this in 2020.  It was at the early stages of the COVID pandemic, so we were really interested in understanding what life was like for these young adults basically, who were making that transition from adolescence into young adulthood.  We found that, I mean, it’s been a lot in the media but there hasn’t been that much data to back it up, but we found that young adults really did find lockdowns, in particular, hard and that they experienced a range of difficulties as a result.  We found that females were particularly affected in the restriction periods, during those lockdowns.  So, we found that they reported higher levels of loneliness, social isolation and also really importantly, they also reported lower levels of motivation and concentration with their study as well. 

That's really important in terms of thinking about even things like the role of universities and tertiary education, the role of schools for preparing young people to make that transition, and thinking about the skills that we’re building in young people, so that they’re able to navigate this transition into young adulthood and then deal with the setbacks that come.  Obviously, the pandemic was let’s hope, a bit of a one-off.  But I think it does show the challenges that young people face and that they really do need extra support during this time.  Interestingly as well, I think this phase of life is typically almost invisible.  We put a lot of focus on younger children, which is obviously completely right, a lot of development happening then and we want to set kids up for success.  But really thinking about the support that we provide for young people as they make this transition into young adulthood is really important as well. 

We also found that a higher-than-normal group of young people who’d moved out of home had returned to live with their parents.  So, thinking about those transitions into adult roles, these young people had made that transition out of home and now, because of the pandemic, were moving back home with their parents.  They had a range of increased needs in terms of financial and emotional and just pure advice.  So, thinking about again the role of parents and how they support their young person, like the idea that parenting stops when it hits 18 is not true, as I'm sure lots of parents with young adults out there would say.  So, just really think there about the needs of young people, shining a spotlight on what’s happening for them and thinking about how we can support them and their families more generally and obviously at the kind of times when there are these disruptors as well that might kind of knock things off course. 

That's why something like LSAC’s really important because we really need to understand now have they now transitioned back out again.  What has that disruption, what’s that done for those young people, for their parents.  Have they reset and everything’s back on track, or are there some still bumps in the road?  So, kind of being able to understand what’s happening is again another real strength of a study like LSAC in being able to follow now and see what’s happening post-pandemic.  So, that's one topic.  Then other topics, I think we might do another session on this one in terms of the roles of prosocial behaviours and mental health.  So, we won’t go into that too much other than just to say that we’ve found that the prosocial behaviour, so really fostering that in children, those behaviours in terms of sharing and caring for others is really important for later wellbeing and mental health. 

Then other topics, things like gambling as well that we’ve looked at, and we’ve found that young people, sorry adolescents I should say, who were playing simulated gambling games during adolescence, were more like to spend real money on gambling as young adults.  They can see a direct relevance in terms of policy and thinking about – that’s obviously literally data from LSAC, is helping to inform some of those discussions that are happening now. 

Again, we also as part of that work looked at the role of parents as well and found that parents who were gambling, and who had higher levels of alcohol consumption, that their young adults were more at risk of gambling as well.  So, then really thinking about the kind of family factors that put that young person at risk as well.  That's a bit of a taster of some of the different type and as I say, these are all on our website as well.  So, there's an opportunity to go and read a bit more about them.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: I love how we could talk for multiple hours on any of those specific topics.  That's just a few, that's just a couple of research policy and practice implications.  Yeah, excellent.  So, you've touched on probably where I’d like to take this next, these snapshots are available on the website so people can access that content there.  But I'm wondering about the availability of the data outside of AIFS and DSS.  What does that look like?  Can people access it?

Lisa Mundy: Yes.  So, DSS make that data available for anyone and it’s free of charge.  There’s details on the Growing Up in Australia website which we’ll make available around how to access it and there's just a couple of forms, but it’s a fairly straightforward process and you can ask any questions and get in touch along the way and we can help facilitate that.  But yeah, anyone can access the data, and there's different releases of data as well.  There's a sub-study which is the child health checkpoint study as well which has more detailed data about health in young adolescents as well.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Great.  Is the website the best place if people have questions or queries about the study or any of the snapshots, is it best for them to go via the website or how could they reach out?

Lisa Mundy: Yeah, the website’s probably the best place.  We are in the process of updating the websites, so watch this space, and any feedback welcome.  The website’s probably the best place.  We’ve got all snapshots of the technical reports as well for anyone who might be more interested in the data side.  Lots of FAQs for data users on there as well in terms of how to access the data and those sorts of things.  We also run data user workshops as well if anyone’s interested in getting more familiar with the data.  We’re currently developing some more resources in that space as well over time.  I think the website’s the best hub and then any questions funnel through there. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Excellent.  Okay, well I think we’re coming towards the end of our catch-up today which has been super interesting.  I'm keen myself to actually keep doing some more digging and reading and discussing these things with you.  I guess a way I’d like to close out our chat is for you to maybe let us know what’s happening in the next short term for LSAC.  There's going to be a new website, anything else you wanted to mention?

Lisa Mundy: Yeah.  So, we’re updating the website and then we’re also as I mentioned, so wave 10 we’re going out to meet our participants and families this year.  Some of that work has started already so that's really exciting, and then we’ll be upping that towards the end of the year.  Next year is our 20-year anniversary, so we’re in the process of planning some events, so watch that space.  Yeah, really keen to hear from people who are interested in the study, using the study.  Get in touch because we want to make sure that this study goes from strength to strength really.  So, keen to make sure that we help people use, access, find the findings, access the data and so on. 

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Great.  I love that idea of LSAC the study being personified and celebrating a 20-year birthday.  That's really cool, it’s such an achievement.  These kinds of studies take a lot of resources and teamwork to keep on track and to keep people coming back to provide data over that length of time, so it’s really impressive. 

Lisa Mundy: It’s definitely a testament to the team, but I think the most important group to thank are the young people themselves and their families, because without them literally the study would not exist.  So, I'm always forever grateful for them taking part.  It’s a big part of their lives to be part of a study like this, so we really appreciate the time that they put into the study.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Yeah, well said.  I think that's a nice way to round it out.  So, thank you to the LSAC participants.  Thank you, Lisa for having a conversation with me today and sharing insights and having a bit of a laugh along the way with me.  It’s been quite enjoyable on my end. 

Lisa Mundy: Likewise.

Jasmine B. MacDonald: Before we finish up, I’d also like to thank the AIFS team behind the scenes that have helped to set up the webinar today.  And to those of you who are watching the webinar, thanks for joining us.  Hopefully, there's been some interesting takeaways.  Remember that there is the feedback survey once our webinar closes.  Let us know what you think, I'm really keen to see those responses and hear your thoughts.  Yeah, I’d like to remind you again that in case you want to share this webinar with colleagues or watch again, that the recording will be available on the AIFS website in about two weeks.  So, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to AIFS news and you’ll hear promptly when the recording is available.  That's it for today. 

We hope that you can join us for our next webinar, which is an LSAC 2.0 webinar where, as Lisa suggested, we’re going to do a deep dive into one of the LSAC research snapshots that looks at how childhood prosocial behaviours such as volunteering are associated with adolescent mental health.  More details about that one will be available next week.  So, that's again, Lisa.

Lisa Mundy: Thanks, Jasmine.  Thanks, everyone.