Identifying early causal factors leading to the development of poor mental health and
behavioral outcomes is essential to design efficient preventive interventions. The substantial …

Valid causal inference is central to progress in theoretical and applied psychology. Although
the randomized experiment is widely considered the gold standard for determining whether …

Studies of the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) often rely on
prospective observational data, from which associations between developmental exposures …

Causal inference is of central importance to developmental psychology. Many key questions
in the field revolve around improving the lives of children and their families. These include …

Causal inference is essential across the biomedical, behavioural and social sciences. By
progressing from confounded statistical associations to evidence of causal relationships …

Life-course epidemiologists have developed sophisticated models for how exposures
throughout life—from gestation to old age—shape health, sometimes years after the …

Abstract The Developmental Origin of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis is a broad
theoretical framework that emphasizes how early risk factors causally influence …

Distinguishing between the effects of nature and nurture constitutes a major research goal
for those interested in understanding human development. It is known, for example, that …

Various parental characteristics, including psychiatric disorders and parenting behaviours,
are associated with offspring mental health and related outcomes in observational studies …

The goal of much observational research is to identify risk factors that have a causal effect
on health and social outcomes. However, observational data are subject to biases from …