Timeframe
2013–2017
Funding
Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment
COMPASS staff
Barry Milne
Jessica McLay
Nichola Shackleton
Kevin Chang
Description
This study identified key determinants of child and adolescent outcomes and sourced many estimates of their effects from international systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These were then integrated into our earlier Model of the Early Life-Course (MEL-C), now boasting full functionality as a “knowledge laboratory”.
We aimed:
- to test the validity of the underlying behavioural equations and specific knowledge sources; and
- to test policy-relevant scenarios by carrying out experiments on the “virtual” cohort created by the working model.
The research plan involved:
- identifying published systematic reviews and meta-analyses on outcomes for children and adolescents (up to 18 years);
- integrating the applicable estimates from these studies into our MEL-C model, thus enhancing it;
- validating this enhanced model and thus validating the published estimates, by comparing simulated results to New Zealand benchmarks; and
- using the enhanced model thus validated to test the impact of potential policies on key child and adolescent outcomes.
The final model was presented in an interactive R Shiny app, another enhancement over the earlier Java tool, and remains available at https://compassnz.shinyapps.io/knowlabshiny.