About the Bristol Project

Location: Bristol, England, UK

Team: Jean Goulding and Stephen Nowicki

For the past 5 years I have been involved in evaluating the impact and effects of locus of control in the lives of children and their parents who live in Bristol England. A Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) was begun, cared for, and nurtured by Dr. Jean Golding. ALSPAC is following children born in 1991-1992 and their parents to throw light on antecedents and correlates of physical and mental disease. The study continues to the present day and has funding to continue into the future. It contains a wealth of unique and useful information specifically involving locus of control and nonverbal processing ability for both children and adults.

Jean Golding and I were funded by the Templeton Foundation to study locus of control. In our grant application we suggested that the “big question” our study could throw light on was “freedom.”

We argued to be able to accurately connect one’s actions with future outcomes has enormous payoff in a democracy; in fact it may be seen as the basic requirement for democracies not only to survive, but to thrive. Being internal means taking responsibility for one’s actions, persisting

longer, delaying rewards, gathering relevant information and resisting coercion; a set of characteristics calculated to drive the engines of free enterprise and democracy and to prevent powerful others from taking over the lives of ordinary citizens. LOC also contributes to the richness of the human condition in the search for happiness, well-being and spirituality. If results of international studies are to be believed, being internal is related to happiness, well-being, and the active practice of one’s spiritual faith in almost every region and in most religions in the world. To help individuals become appropriately internal is consistent with the basic assumptions, goals and beliefs of the John Templeton Foundation in finding answers to “big questions” supporting of freedom, free enterprise, spirituality and perceived free will. Locus of control (LOC) is relevant to all of these concepts. Because it reflects individuals’ belief that their efforts do or do not affect what happens to them, it provides the core dynamic of how the expectation of freedom or the lack of it plays out in people’s lives.

Our Findings

Next Steps

Most past studies of locus of control are cross-sectional in nature and do not relate parental locus of control to the outcomes of their offspring; in consequence identifying any type of causal pathway is not feasible. Fortunately, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is unique in having collected data on LOC measures on the parents (at 3 time points each, including during pregnancy) and their offspring (at 2 time points), thus allowing time-related analyses. We have already shown, using this material, that children of externally oriented parents (i.e. those who tend to believe that things happen because of luck or fate) when compared to their internally oriented peers (who believe that their own efforts can change what happens to them), tend to have offspring who exhibit more difficult behaviors in the preschool period (Nowicki et al 2017a); in the primary school their teachers also report more hyperactive, aggressive and difficult behaviors (Nowicki et al 2018b). Since the parents’ LOC was identified before the child was born, the child’s behavior and achievements are more likely to be a consequence than a cause of the parents’ externality. We have shown that the offspring of external parents also have a reduction in IQ (Golding et al 2017c) and poor primary school results in maths and reading (Golding et al 2018c, 2018d). These results appeared to be largely explained by the parenting attitudes and behaviors of these external parents. There are also associations with health outcomes such as obesity in the adolescent offspring which is associated not only with parental externality but also with that of the child him/herself (Golding et al 2018b).

An exercise to identify whether there is any further evidence for a causal relationship was provided by analyses of change over time. We showed that a change in the parent’s LOC from external to internal was accompanied by an improvement in the child’s behavior (Nowicki et al 2018c). In contrast when a parent changed from internal to external, the child’s behavior became worse. These results concerned the primary school teacher’s assessment of behavior and therefore not biased by parental attitudes.

Thus there is considerable evidence from completed analyses to show that external parents have a more laissez faire attitude to parenting: the mothers are less likely to give up smoking or eat a healthy diet during pregnancy (Golding et al XXXX); they are less likely to breast feed their child, and provide him/her with a poor diet once weaned (Golding et al XXXX); during the pre-school period they are less likely to read to the child or encourage him/her in various activities, and once the child is at school they are less likely to play a positive role in supporting the child, and where relevant, ensuring that the child completes homework, or to interact with the teacher (Golding 2018d).

These results of our past work are striking and indicate that a program to change the orientation of parents towards internality may result in improvements in the health, behavior and achievements of the preschool and school-age child. However, there are a number of unanswered questions that need to be addressed by this longitudinal data set. Assuming that the relationships between parental externality and offspring outcome are causal, one focus of the proposed study will be to determine the features of the backgrounds of the offspring that determine whether or not they develop an internal or external outlook. A second focus will be to determine ways in which the parental and offspring LOC outlook may be associated with adolescent achievements, health and behavior. The research questions can be summarized as:

What are the associations of parental and child LOC with adolescent achievements such as school examination results (KS3, O-levels, A-levels), and further education.
How do the parental measures of LOC in pregnancy and 6 years later relate to the adolescents’ behaviors in regard to criminality, use of social or illicit drugs, gambling and aggression. Does the child’s own LOC play a part?
Is there a long-term association between the LOC of the parents and the child and mental illness as demonstrated by elevated levels of depression and anxiety in adolescence?
What features of the child/adolescent’s background are associated with their own development of an internal or external LOC by the age of 16?

Our major aims are: (1) to continue to chart the ways in which the LOC of the parents and their offspring are associated with health and development over time, and to determine the mechanisms by which such outcomes may occur, and thence assess the importance or otherwise of LOC on the various causal pathways; (2) assuming there continues to be evidence linking internality to positive outcomes, to identify ways in which internality develops by age 16 (in the study offspring) so that appropriate advice and interventions (including RCTs) can be planned for the future.