Compare methods

	Life-Course Epidemiology	Cohort-Sequential Design
Field	Social Epidemiology	Social Epidemiology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2002	1953
Originator	Yoav Ben-Shlomo & Diana Kuh	Richard Q. Bell (convergence/accelerated approach); Yasuo Miyazaki & Stephen Raudenbush (cohort-linkage tests)
Type	Conceptual and analytic framework for long-term exposure-disease modeling	Observational longitudinal design linking overlapping age cohorts
Seminal source	Ben-Shlomo, Y., & Kuh, D. (2002). A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31(2), 285-293.	Bell, R. Q. (1953). Convergence: an accelerated longitudinal approach. Child Development, 24(2), 145-152.
Aliases	Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease, Life-Course Framework, Developmental Origins Epidemiology, Biological and Social Programming Approach	Accelerated Longitudinal Design, Convergence Design, Cohort-Sequential Accelerated Design, Overlapping-Cohort Longitudinal Design
Related	3	3
Summary	Life-course epidemiology is the study of how physical and social exposures across gestation, childhood, adolescence, and adult life shape later health and disease risk. Codified by Yoav Ben-Shlomo and Diana Kuh in their 2002 International Journal of Epidemiology paper and the 2003 glossary by Kuh, Ben-Shlomo, Lynch, Hallqvist, and Power, the framework supplies a set of competing conceptual models that specify how the timing and sequence of exposures matter. Rather than asking only what causes disease, it asks when exposures act and how their effects compound. Its three signature models — critical or sensitive periods, accumulation of risk, and chains of risk — give researchers a disciplined way to translate developmental and social theory into testable longitudinal hypotheses about the origins of adult chronic disease.	The cohort-sequential design — also called the accelerated longitudinal design — spans a long age range quickly by following several overlapping age cohorts for a short time each and then statistically linking their trajectory segments into one long developmental curve. Richard Bell introduced the idea in 1953 as 'convergence,' a way to study development over many years without waiting many years. Instead of following one cohort from, say, age 10 to age 20 for a full decade, the design enrolls cohorts aged 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 and follows each for two or three years, with adjacent cohorts overlapping in age so their pieces can be joined. Yasuo Miyazaki and Stephen Raudenbush later supplied the formal multilevel tests for whether the cohorts can legitimately be linked. The design trades a single continuous within-person record for speed, while using overlap to check that the assembled curve is coherent.