Event Description
Presented by: Drs. Emma Nichols (Methods team lead) and Samer Atshan
Longitudinal data on risk factors at different ages across the life course are essential for gaining important insights into how the timing and accumulation of exposure to risk factors influence the risk of dementia. With increased interest in the exposome and life course research questions, there have been commensurate increases in data sources and methodological approaches for answering these questions using empirical data. Methodological approaches developed within specific disciplines have largely remained within disciplinary silos, despite their potential for broader applications. By enumerating these approaches in a single place and applying each approach to a data analysis case study, we aim to expand discovery in life course dementia research and help investigators align their research questions with appropriate analytic methods. In our case study, we used birth cohort data from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS) to evaluate the association between life course BMI and inflammation in later life, highlighting key implementation decisions and practical considerations to guide method selection in applied research.