James Law

The emergence of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties: Analyzing risk and protective pathways in the United Kingdom and Germany

This study aims to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by getting to grips with certain facets of parenting and child development and how they might influence their child’s … Read more

The Role of Social and Emotional Adjustment in Mediating the Relationship Between Early Experiences and Different Language Outcomes

This paper looks at how the home learning environment of very young children might affect their language and communication skills later on. The research draws on data from 5,000 children … Read more

Aggressive behavior, emotional, and attention problems across childhood and academic attainment at the end of primary school

This research assesses whether aggressive behavior and emotional problems from early childhood onwards are related to academic attainment at the end of primary education, and whether these links are independent … Read more

Testing the association between the early parent–child relationship and teacher reported socio-emotional difficulties at 11 years: a quantile mediation analysis

This paper investigates the strength of association behind well documented links between early parenting factors and later adolescent mental health problems. It goes on to consider the role of language … Read more

Vocabulary development and trajectories of behavioral and emotional difficulties via academic ability and peer problems

This study investigates associations between trajectories of children’s vocabulary development and subsequent behavioral and emotional difficulties via two potential mediating mechanisms; literacy and peer problems. Nationally representative data from 4,983 … Read more

Association of proximal elements of social disadvantage with children’s language development at 2 years: an analysis of data from the Children in Focus (CiF) sample from the ALSPAC birth cohort

Background An association between social disadvantage and early language development is commonly reported in the literature, but less attention has been paid to the way that different aspects of social … Read more

Parenting Behaviours and Early Child Development in Europe

Social inequality related to children’s development starts early in life. Parenting behaviour as an explanatory factor has important effects on very young children’s verbal and behavior social skills, and on … Read more

The association between mother’s education level and early child language skills; findings from three European cohort studies

The development of language skills during the early years of a child’s life are vital for school readiness, educational attainment, and later life outcomes. The socio-economic background of parents, as … Read more

The Pros and Cons of Combining Birth Cohort Data

This short SEED working paper is designed to highlight the value of and the pitfalls in combining and comparing data across large scale representative population cohorts. It was carried out … Read more