The Famous Dunedin Study Gets World-wide Attention

Morning
Report

The landmark Dunedin Study
of babies born in the early 1970s has caught the eye of the
OECD.

The study followed the lives of 1037 babies
babies born at Queen Mary Maternity Hospital, Dunedin, in
1972. The participants were assessed every two years, then
as adults every five to seven years. Using over 52 years of
data, the Dunedin researchers identified eight different
pathways strongly linked to early factors like mental
health, childhood trauma, and cognitive skills.

The
OECD plans to use these findings to help policymakers around
the world understand how early life experiences shape
futures that thrive or struggle.

Dorothy Adams, an
independent adviser who worked at the OECD on secondment
from the NZ Ministry of Social Development, told Morning
Report the collaboration was “incredibly
valuable”.

While there are other overseas longitude
study, with a couple done over a similar timeframe, the
Dunedin Study is unique, partly due to its very high
retention rate of about 90 percent.

“The OECD, in
their view, it [the Dunedin Study] is world leading in many
regards,” Adams said.

She said a particularly
interesting finding from the study was the role IQ plays
throughout an individual’s life.

“Young ones found to
have good, or high IQ were more likely to do better in life
then those with low IQ,” she said.

She said IQ is
amenable to intervention, and research findings are starting
to be implemented in programmes.

For example, the
study found ages three to four were critical for development
of self regulation – how you think, behave and
feel.

“The Dunedin Study didn’t necessarily give the
answer about what to do, but it really narrowed down the
search,” Adams said.

In response, a programme called
Engage was developed, a game that helps develop cognitive
skills in children, and was implemented in about half of New
Zealand’s Early Childhood Education (ECE).

“It’s being
measured, it’s being monitored and we are seeing results,”
Adams said. “I think that is a really lovely example of how
these research findings are starting to be used in
intervention.”

She said researchers are starting to
look at how the Dunedin Study could be used more for
contemporary challenges and to guide intervention
development.

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