pdf [5.3MB] - Department of Families, Housing, Community Services

only be useful in providing information for causal impacts in the short to medium term, as theeldest participants from the child cohorts are currently 10-11 years of age.ATP is currently the only study in Australia that could be used to determine long term impactsof FF on health, economic and social outcomes. Participants in this study are currently25 years of age and would provide sufficient data to determine long term outcomes. Indeed,preliminary works have been published which map the inter-relationships of a number ofvariables that interact over time and result in outcomes such as anxiety, depression,substance abuse, antisocial behaviour, academic achievement, risky driving and measuresof social capital. The main limitation of ATP is the length of time that measures of FF andparenting have been recorded. These measures have only been taken since the participantswere in their early teens, with no measures during infancy or early childhood.2.2.6 PROPOSED METHOD OF DETERMINING OUTCOMESOutcomes would be mapped from the ATP and LSAC databases using a similarmethodology to that developed by Prior et al (2005) (see Figure 2-6 and Figure 2-7).Outcomes would be mapped for each wave of the study so that the likelihood of one of theevents of interest occurring could be established across different age groups. For example,as shown in Figure 2-6 the outcome being measured is depression (on the right of thediagram). The mapping process would determine the relationships between family, peer,school, and other environments (on the left hand side of the diagram) that lead to thisdepression outcome. These determining environmental factors build up over time soinformation on each individual from previous waves of the study would be used to determineoutcomes in older age cohorts.The ability to join information from LSAC and ATP is limited by slightly different methods ofmeasuring FF. There are, however, some consistencies, although one or two more waves ofinformation would ideally be required to successfully bridge the gap in ages between the twostudies. Figure 2-8 shows the approximate age of the study cohorts, as well as theinformation gap that would exist as a result of conducting this evaluation with the currentdata. It is possible to utilise the current information to estimate outcomes in the gap period.This would be done on a last observation carried forward basis (in other words the mappingfor outcomes for children aged 10-11 years would be applied to those aged 11 to 13 years.FIGURE 2-8: APPROXIMATE AGE OF STUDY COHORTS AND BRIDGING THE CURRENT INFORMATION GAPWhile the option of waiting for additional study waves to be completed to bridge the gap ininformation would provide a more accurate estimate for mapping purposes, completing thisanalysis with the current information using a last observation carried forward would notintroduce vast inaccuracies into the estimates. The last observation carried forward methodcould be tested using sensitivity analysis to inform the impact of these assumptions on theoverall costing methodology.35