Governance team
Meet the Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) governance team.
LSAC is conducted in partnership between the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and Roy Morgan.
- DSS provides overall management of Growing Up in Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.
- AIFS is responsible for the design and content of the study, data management and research and dissemination (meet the AIFS research team).
- Roy Morgan is responsible for data collection and delivery, instrument development and management of the Growing Up in Australia sample.
Leading researchers at research institutions and universities throughout Australia provide advice to the study through the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC).
About the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC)
The SAC provides advice on the scientific design and development of the Growing up in Australia including:
- development across the adolescent and young adult years
- survey methodologies and content
- survey instruments
- data dissemination
- analysis of LSAC data.
Additionally, SAC members may provide expert advice in areas relating to young adult and adult development across domains including:
- jobs
- skills and employment
- wellbeing
- education
- health
- living arrangements
- relationships and parenting
- methodology.
SAC members participate in regular meetings with the LSAC project team and are regularly updated on the progress of the study.
Members
| Member | Role |
|---|---|
| Professor Amanda Cooklin | Amanda is a social scientist and ARC Future Fellow at the Judith Lumley Centre at La Trobe University, leading the Work and Family Research Program. She has established expertise in the epidemiology of parents' mental health, the social determinants of parenting, and the work-family interface. Her research comprises epidemiological cohort studies and intervention trials, with a focus on establishing the longitudinal relationships between parents' mental health parenting and children's outcomes and the role of parents' employment, job quality and work-family balance on parent mental health and parenting. Dr Cooklin has attracted >$7 million in research funding, resulting in 59 scientific publications on parents work and wellbeing. She has also presented widely on this topic. |
| Professor Ben Edwards | Ben is a Senior Fellow at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods where he is focused on policy relevant research on child and youth development and advising and supporting longitudinal studies. He has been involved with LSAC in some capacity for almost a decade. His research interests include understanding the impact of social, familial and institutional environments on human development; longitudinal study methodology and data linkage; evaluation of government programs for disadvantaged children; the intergenerational impacts of traumatic experiences on offspring; and the impact of natural disasters on human development. |
| Adjunct Professor Donna Berthelsen | Donna holds qualifications in psychology and education and is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Creative Industries, Education, and Social Justice at Queensland University of Technology. Donna has had long-term engagement with LSAC. Roles have included membership of the Scientific Advisory Group, since the initiation of LSAC in 2002, as well as the role of Design Team Leader for Education from 2002 to 2020. Her research addresses applied issues about children’s learning in families, early childhood programs, and school systems, and post-school education, through large scale and linked studies. She has extensive experience in research commissioned by government and community agencies involving multi-disciplinary teams and conducted in partnership with end-users. |
| Associate Professor Julie Moschion | Julie joined the University of Queensland as an Associate Professor in May 2023. Julie participated in designing the Journeys Home Survey, a longitudinal study of Australians who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness. Her current research revolves around a number of issues related to disadvantage in education, housing, health and labour economics. Specifically, she works on homelessness & precarious housing, substance use, incarceration, gender gaps in education, peer effects and female's labour market participation. Julie is developing a research agenda aiming to support the development of better opportunities for Indigenous Australians. This includes a project to evaluate the impact of Indigenous preferential procurement programs and a project on "Historical frontier violence: drivers, legacy and the role of truth-telling", both supported by ARC funding. |
| Professor Lisa Smithers | Lisa is an epidemiologist and Head of the Discipline of Public Health, School of Health & Society, University of Wollongong. Lisa’s research is focused on understanding how early life events (during pregnancy, infancy and early childhood) impact on health and human capital. As part of her program of research, Lisa is interested in how to overcome the effects of social disadvantage in early life. Her methodological expertise includes large population-based datasets, randomised controlled trials, and systematic reviews. Lisa is also interested in contemporary methods for making better causal inference from observational data. |
| Professor Lyndall Strazdins | Lyndall is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, and the Director of the Research School of Population Health at ANU. She is an ARC-awarded Future Fellow investigating time as a resource for health and how time structure power relations, gender inequality and peoples’ capacity to be healthy, especially in families. Lyndall leads the work and family component of LSAC, and serves as a scientific consultant to government. Her research focuses on contemporary predicaments of work and care and their health and equity consequences, viewing health as inter-linked within families. |
| Dr Meredith O'Connor | Dr O’Connor leads the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s LifeCourse infrastructure, involving a collaboration of over 20 longitudinal cohort studies that track health pathways over time. With a background in Educational and Developmental Psychology, her research focuses on how mental health unfolds over the life span and the potential to join forces across cohort studies for greater research impact. |
| Professor Tim Slade | Tim research interests centre around the diagnosis and epidemiology of alcohol and drug use disorders, mental disorders and their comorbidity. He focuses on adolescent and young adult health and study the influence of individual, peer and family factors on the emergence and development of alcohol use and mental disorders. Other interests include the development of school-based programs for the prevention of alcohol-related harms among adolescents. |
Friends of LSAC
The Friends of LSAC was established in 2024, to replace the CAG Expert Advisory Group.
This group comprises of members with a long-term involvement with LSAC, including retired SAC members and representatives from key organisations.
Individual members
- John Ainley
- Megan Bell
- Bruce Bradbury
- Susan Morton
- Jan Nicholson
- Ann Sanson
- Michael Sawyer
- Carol Soloff
- Melissa Wake
- Emeritus Professor Stephen Zubrick
Key organisations
- Growing Up in New Zealand
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
- Roy Morgan.
Child Health Checkpoint Advisor
Professor Melissa Wake
Paediatrician, community child health researcher, and Scientific Director, the Generation Victoria (GenV).