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To explore sleep patterns in indigenous Australian children and assess the role of sleep timing in longitudinal changes in body mass index (BMI). Latent profile analysis was conducted with the Australian Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) cohort data (wave 5), to determine distinct patterns of bed and wake timing, taking account of weekday sleep duration, weekday and weekend bedtimes, and weekday wake times. Multilevel models with a random intercept were used to investigate the ...

The present thesis explores the effects of racism on Aboriginal children’s social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) and Aboriginal pregnant women’s mental health and wellbeing. Identification of protective factors against the effects of racism on child wellbeing was also contemplated. The thesis comprises seven chapters. Chapter 1 includes a review of the literature on characteristics of the Aboriginal Australian population and the effects of racism across the lifespan. This chapter also contemp...

The aim of this paper is to summarise existing evidence and new analyses that shed light on the role of reconciliation in schools and early learning services in particular, and in education more broadly. We present the first analysis in Australia of the relationship between racism/discrimination and cognitive development among the Indigenous Australian population, showing a negative and statistically significant longitudinal relationship. We discuss the policy implications of these findings...

Households are important health contexts, providing social, emotional, financial and material support, but little is known about the role of household composition in the social etiology of Indigenous health. Our research is framed by an Indigenous standpoint, using eight waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. We investigated whether household composition and change in household composition were associated with the self-reported general health of Indigenous children ...

This paper provides a brief summary of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally representative household panel survey. It describes the survey’s key design features, provides an overview of its content, and reports on response rates and sample sizes. It also highlights a few examples of research utilising the data, discusses two challenges currently facing the study, and provides details on how to access the data.

Participation in sport and physical activity can improve academic outcomes and has been identified as a potential mechanism for addressing educational disadvantage and 'closing the gap' in Australian Indigenous communities. To explore this possibility in relation to sport and lifestyle we performed a cluster analysis on data from the Footprints in Time study (also known as the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children), using data from Waves 3-6 (2010-2013, ages 5-9 years) of this cohort stud...

This critical systematic review of Australian research literature provides insights into the aspirations of Indigenous communities to collaborate with schools in establishing local Indigenous language and cultural programmes. This systematic review investigates the body of Australian research into the cultural, social and educational impacts on those Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students who have had opportunities to engage with these school-based Indigenous languages and/or cultu...

In Australia and internationally, there are increasing calls for the use of strengths-based methodologies, to counter the dominant deficit discourse that pervades research, policy, and media relating to Indigenous health and wellbeing. However, there is an absence of literature on the practical application of strengths-based approaches to quantitative research. This paper describes and empirically evaluates a set of strategies to support strengths-based quantitative analysis. A case study abo...

Objective: Sport may promote academic performance through physiological and psychosocial mechanisms. We aimed to examine the association between sports participation and academic performance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Methods: Participants were from four successive waves of Australia’s Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (n ¼ 303, baseline age 5–6 y). Cumulative sports participation was regressed against academic performance from two standardised tests. Res...

Indigenous fathers play a central role in the lives of Indigenous children growing up strong. For Australia’s Indigenous people, growing strong includes the possessing heightened levels of health, education and cultural knowledge. This article focuses on Indigenous fathers and how they understand the importance of sharing cultural activities with their children. We argue that the sharing of Indigenous cultural practices, and the subsequent telling of this narrative, are key enablers for ...

We study the effects of inherited socioeconomic characteristics on markers of unhealthy bodyweight. Taking Australian microdata from 2007 to 2013, we show that approximately 4% of the variation in outcomes is determined by factors beyond an individual's control, such as their race, gender, and social class. Paternal socioeconomic status is the primary explanatory factor, with those born to more affluent fathers slightly less likely to be overweight in adulthood. Decompositions reveal that onl...

We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country's labor market, we examine employment and wages for these groups over time after arrival. There is significant heterogeneity between host countries, but in general, refugees experience persistently worse outcomes than other migrant...

When a relationship breaks down, women are at a much higher risk of falling into poverty than men—especially if they have children to care for. This report uncovers new research that suggests that while a separation can reduce a man’s disposable household income by 5 per cent, on average a women’s household income decreases by almost 30 per cent. The most vulnerable group to fall into this ‘poverty trap’ were women who were without a job before the break up, and women with children. Whi...

Few environments reliably influence mean-level and rank-order changes in personality – perhaps because personality development needs to be examined through an individualized, person-centered lens. The current study used Bayesian multilevel linear models to examine the impact of life events on changes in ipsative consistency across four to 10 waves of data with four datasets (N = 24,491). Both between- and within-person effects were found for various life events. Selection effects were found f...

Immigration and welfare policies in resettlement countries frequently function to place refugees and asylum seekers at greater risk of financial and visa precarity. For those on temporary visas, in particular, these policies often lead to extended periods of uncertainty and restricted entitlements, with associated negative health impacts. However, less is known about how these elements interact in the immigration and welfare context of Australia. Through in-depth interviews with 14 people fro...

No studies appear to examine potential associations between changes in built environments across childhood and the developmental trajectories of child weight status. Examine the developmental trajectories of child weight status with respect to changes in childhood exposure to the built environments. This study used data of 9589 children with biennial follow-up (2004-2016), retrieved from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Changes in objectively-measured child weight status (i.e., ...

The aim of this paper is to empirically test the impact of social contacts on the individual unemployment risk and the probability of persisting unemployed over time controlling for the local context where the individual lives and creates friendships. We present evidence for a highly significant impact of social contacts on individual unemployment risk: social contacts reduce both the unemployment risk and the state dependence in unemployment. The disadvantage from having been unemployed in t...

The last few decades have seen the intensity of internal migration decline in Australia and other advanced economies including the United States. Recent evidence suggests that changes in the composition of the population alone do not account for this persistent downward trend. This has led migration scholars to suspect that more profound behavioural changes driven by social, economic, and technological transformations are at play and that shifts in migration behaviour are likely to be reflect...

It is often assumed that people experiencing homelessness gravitate to large cities and central city areas because of the concentration of homelessness services — a so-called magnet or honeypot effect. Yet little is actually known about how people experiencing homelessness move across space over time. This article explores this geography by comparing the mobility of those experiencing homelessness, those ‘at-risk’, and those renting privately in Australia, between waves in two Australian pane...

This paper attempts to provide new evidence on the indirect cost of neighbourhood crime rates on mental wellbeing of residents. Crime places a heavy burden on the economy, and it receives significant attention from the public. Yet, the connection between crime and health for victims and non-victims is not well captured in the literature. Using spatial methodology, we differentiate the effect on mental wellbeing of residents due to the crime rates in their immediate neighbourhood (local) and c...