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From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018

The Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) is Britain’s longest-running birth cohort study. From their birth in 1946 until the present day, its research participants, or study members, have filled out questionnaires and completed cognitive or physical examinations...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Elizabeth, Hannah J., Payling, Daisy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8795233/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35103037
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695121999283
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author Elizabeth, Hannah J.
Payling, Daisy
author_facet Elizabeth, Hannah J.
Payling, Daisy
author_sort Elizabeth, Hannah J.
collection PubMed
description The Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) is Britain’s longest-running birth cohort study. From their birth in 1946 until the present day, its research participants, or study members, have filled out questionnaires and completed cognitive or physical examinations every few years. Among other outcomes, the findings of these studies have framed how we understand health inequalities. Throughout the decades and multiple follow-up studies, each year the study members have received a birthday card from the survey staff. Although the birthday cards were originally produced in 1962 as a method to record changes of address at a time when the adolescent study members were potentially leaving school and home, they have become more than that with time. The cards mark, and have helped create, an ongoing evolving relationship between the NSHD and the surveyed study members, eventually coming to represent a relationship between the study members themselves. This article uses the birthday cards alongside archival material from the NSHD and oral history interviews with survey staff to trace the history of the growing awareness of importance of emotion within British social science research communities over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries. It documents changing attitudes to science’s dependence on research participants, their well-being, and the collaborative nature of scientific research. The article deploys an intertextual approach to reading these texts alongside an attention to emotional communities drawing on the work of Barbara Rosenwein.
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spelling pubmed-87952332022-01-29 From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018 Elizabeth, Hannah J. Payling, Daisy Hist Human Sci Articles The Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) is Britain’s longest-running birth cohort study. From their birth in 1946 until the present day, its research participants, or study members, have filled out questionnaires and completed cognitive or physical examinations every few years. Among other outcomes, the findings of these studies have framed how we understand health inequalities. Throughout the decades and multiple follow-up studies, each year the study members have received a birthday card from the survey staff. Although the birthday cards were originally produced in 1962 as a method to record changes of address at a time when the adolescent study members were potentially leaving school and home, they have become more than that with time. The cards mark, and have helped create, an ongoing evolving relationship between the NSHD and the surveyed study members, eventually coming to represent a relationship between the study members themselves. This article uses the birthday cards alongside archival material from the NSHD and oral history interviews with survey staff to trace the history of the growing awareness of importance of emotion within British social science research communities over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries. It documents changing attitudes to science’s dependence on research participants, their well-being, and the collaborative nature of scientific research. The article deploys an intertextual approach to reading these texts alongside an attention to emotional communities drawing on the work of Barbara Rosenwein. SAGE Publications 2021-05-20 2022-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8795233/ /pubmed/35103037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695121999283 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Elizabeth, Hannah J.
Payling, Daisy
From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title_full From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title_fullStr From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title_full_unstemmed From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title_short From cohort to community: The emotional work of birthday cards in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, 1946–2018
title_sort from cohort to community: the emotional work of birthday cards in the medical research council national survey of health and development, 1946–2018
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8795233/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35103037
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695121999283
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