The Famous Dunedin Study Gets World-wide Attention

Scoop

22-07-2025

The landmark Dunedin Study of babies born in the early 1970s has caught the eye of the OECD.
The study followed the lives of 1037 babies babies born at Queen Mary Maternity Hospital, Dunedin, in 1972. The participants were assessed every two years, then as adults every five to seven years. Using over 52 years of data, the Dunedin researchers identified eight different pathways strongly linked to early factors like mental health, childhood trauma, and cognitive skills.
The OECD plans to use these findings to help policymakers around the world understand how early life experiences shape futures that thrive or struggle.
Dorothy Adams, an independent adviser who worked at the OECD on secondment from the NZ Ministry of Social Development, told Morning Report the collaboration was "incredibly valuable".
While there are other overseas longitude study, with a couple done over a similar timeframe, the Dunedin Study is unique, partly due to its very high retention rate of about 90 percent.
"The OECD, in their view, it [the Dunedin Study] is world leading in many regards," Adams said.
She said a particularly interesting finding from the study was the role IQ plays throughout an individual's life.
"Young ones found to have good, or high IQ were more likely to do better in life then those with low IQ," she said.
She said IQ is amenable to intervention, and research findings are starting to be implemented in programmes.
For example, the study found ages three to four were critical for development of self regulation - how you think, behave and feel.
"The Dunedin Study didn't necessarily give the answer about what to do, but it really narrowed down the search," Adams said.
In response, a programme called Engage was developed, a game that helps develop cognitive skills in children, and was implemented in about half of New Zealand's Early Childhood Education (ECE).
"It's being measured, it's being monitored and we are seeing results," Adams said. "I think that is a really lovely example of how these research findings are starting to be used in intervention."
She said researchers are starting to look at how the Dunedin Study could be used more for contemporary challenges and to guide intervention development.