Commentary: development of the Aberdeen children of the 1950s study

This study was set up in the early 1960s, not as a prospective longitudinal study but as a retrospective reconstruction of the life events of children born 6–12 years earlier. It built upon the existence of a continuous databank of obstetric and social information established by Professor Sir Dugald Baird in 1951 covering all births occurring in the city of Aberdeen. The databank had been used primarily for monitoring year-by-year changes in obstetric performance and for identifying priorities for clinical research and practice. Some attempts to follow-up the later lives of children born in Aberdeen hospitals had been made but these were small and exceptional. One such study, by an obstetrical colleague and myself, came to the attention of Stephen Richardson and Herbert Birch, scientific staff members of the American Association for the Aid of Crippled Children (AACC) in New York and alerted them to the research possibilities of the Aberdeen situation. They were interested in setting up an epidemiological study of intellectual disability and its possible antecedents in obstetrical experience but had been unable to find a site that met their requirements in the USA. After visits to Aberdeen and discussions with Baird, other members of the existing Aberdeen team and myself, they agreed to plan and carry out a collaborative study designed to achieve their joint and individual objectives...