Learn how to manage the challenges and opportunities of data harmonization in this masterclass with Professor Aryeh Stein, who will share his learning from two major longitudinal studies: INCAP and COHORTS.

There has been a growing recognition of data harmonization’s potential since the Lancet Series on Maternal and Child Nutrition (2008, 2013) drew on data harmonized across longitudinal datasets, to focus attention on early child nutrition and its long-term consequences.

Data harmonization can enhance the power, scope and causal attribution of longitudinal data sets and intervention studies for development research. However, it can also throw up considerable challenges, as few studies are designed to enable cross-context and longitudinal analysis without substantial time and effort devoted to ensuring that measures are comparable.

Professor Aryeh Stein works across two major longitudinal studies: the first, the INCAP Nutrition Supplementation Trial, in Guatemala, explores the long-term consequences for human capital and cardiometabolic disease, after the introduction of a nutritional supplement to young children, as well as pregnant and lactating women. The second is COHORTS, which analyses harmonized data from birth cohort studies in Brazil, Guatemala, India, Philippines and South Africa.

This masterclass is part of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) events series, in conjunction with Young Lives and their ESRC Methodological learning project.