Academic literature on the topic 'Gender bias workplace'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of working women in a male-dominated country (Morocco) and unveil the unique challenges and everyday gender-bias they face, the psychological impact of the perceived gender-bias and, finally, identify a variety of coping strategies or combatting mechanisms affecting their motivation and retention in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach Empirical evidence was obtained using a qualitative research method. The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used to collect incidents recalled by women in the select institution reflecting their perceptions of their managers’ ineffective behaviors towards them and the impact of these behaviors. The critical incidents were inductively coded, and behavioral statements were derived from the coded data. Findings The qualitative data analysis led them to structure the data according to two theme clusters: The perceived gender-bias behaviors (Covert and evident personal and organizational behaviors) and Psychological impacts resulting from the perceived bias. These behavioral practices included abusive behaviors, unfair treatment, bias and lack of recognition. The psychological impact elements involved decreased productivity, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Practical implications Understanding these experiences can facilitate the identification of strategies geared towards the retention of women in the workforce, and Moroccan organizations can develop and implement strategies and policies that are geared towards eliminating gender-bias in the workplace and to retaining and motivating women who remain ambitious to work in male-dominated environments and cultures. Originality/value This paper provides evidence that sufficient organizational mechanisms to support women in male-dominated environments are still unavailable, leaving them to find the proper coping mechanisms to persevere and resist.

This extended abstract shares research factors that affect gender equity in the workplace, along with subsequent workplace interventions that have been trialed at Santos to address the research findings. A collaborative initiative between several leading universities and companies across a range of industries was established to identify challenges associated with gender representation in the workforce. A number of key research areas were focused on, including bias and its effects on gender equity, resilience in the workplace, and factors that affect retention and attrition of women in the workplace. Findings Unconscious and conscious bias needs to be tackled directly and through open intervention. Bias in manifested in judgments and decision-making that affect women's working conditions. Removing biased decision-making through awareness programs, education and direct challenge has a positive impact on diversity and productivity. Resilience builders can differ by gender. Interventions in the workplace to build resilience for women need to include confidence building. Successful women can suffer confidence crises as often as less successful women. Women are more likely to establish the confidence needed to be resilient in organisations when there is a culture of psychological flexibility. This extended abstract will share the application of the research findings to the Santos workplace. For example, how decision making and bias training at Santos has assisted a broad range of disciplines, and what effect resilience-building strategies have had on productivity and culture.

Gender bias in employment is not a new phenomenon. The historical devalued status of women and equity-seeking groups preserved in cultural and social gendered roles permeates the workplace and contributes to institutional structures which are fashioned by and reproduced through traditional norms and mores relegating women and equity-seeking groups to secondary status roles. The question then becomes is the continuation of these reinforced structural norms in the best long-term interest of all humanity? What are we giving up when we relegate over half of the world’s population to secondary and devalued status? What gains could be made if all workers were given the same opportunities, supports, and encouragements to reach their full potential.

This qualitative study examines the ways in which male and female police officers view and enact gender in their workplace. Data were generated from in-depth interviews with 20 active police officers working in a populous Canadian province. Although most male officers deny gender differences and gender bias, female officers describe experiences of workplace sexism and deploy adaptive strategies daily in their workplaces to resist gender inequality. Both men and women describe a masculine-coded ideal police officer and disparage the “old police culture” and “old boy’s club.”

Women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Gender discrimination and gender bias reinforce cultural stereotypes about women and their ability to perform in male-dominated STEM fields. Greater policy intervention can bolster national response to gender-based harassment and discrimination. There are four major efforts that individual institutions, local governments, and the federal government can support to combat gender discrimination in STEM: (1) invest in early education initiatives for increasing female representation, (2) institute stronger state and federal policies around gender discrimination, (3) foster workplace practices that promote diversity, and (4) develop better quantification and metrics for assessing gender discrimination to enact more meaningful policies.

This article investigates the extent to which existing workplaces assist women to balance employment and elder care responsibilities. Two sources of data are used in this article. Interview data of 246 women who are caregivers to elderly kin and who work in 37 workplaces in Nova Scotia, Canada are analyzed to obtain the employee's perception of elder care policy. In addition, content analysis of the 80 policy documents in these workplaces is conducted. Findings reveal a child care bias in family-friendly policies, a gender bias in policy formulation, and a focus on workplace productivity rather than employee well-being. This analysis suggests that current workplace policy does not take into consideration the complex needs and diverse situations of employed women providing care for elderly kin.

We relied on 372 justice procedures in the workplace (arbitral hearings) to assess the viability of the “iron law of paternalism,” a thesis essentially arguing that women will receive more lenient outcomes. With severity of the offense invariant, these data provide no support for this thesis in the workplace.

The present study was an adaptation of Richeson and Nussbaum's (2004) study of racism to gender bias. Two different gender ideologies were theoretically analyzed, then the influence of these ideologies on implicit and explicit forms of gender bias was examined. Psychology undergraduates were presented with a prompt promoting either a sexblind or sexaware approach to reducing gender bias. Participants then completed a measure of implicit (IAT Gender/Career) and explicit (MAWWWS) bias. Results suggested that, relative to the sexaware perspective, the sexblind perspective generated less implicit gender bias. There was no difference between ideological groups on the explicit measure. The findings of the present study increase the body of literature on the sexblind and sexaware ideologies and call into question the assumption that sexism and racism are analogous constructs.

This study investigates how women are affected by gender bias in the workplace. Despite the increasing numbers of women in the workforce, women are still under-represented and under-valued in workplaces, which, in part, is due to their gender stereotype. This study demonstrates how gender bias in the workplace has been proven to limit women in their careers and potential in their occupational roles. The media's negative depiction of women in their gender stereotype reinforces and perpetuates this image as a cultural norm in society. Women both conform and are judged and evaluated according to their weak and submissive gender stereotype. Women face challenges and problems in the workplace when they are evaluated and appraised by their female gender stereotype. Women have been prevented from acquiring jobs and positions, have been denied promotions and advancements, failed to be perceived as desiring of and capable of leadership or management positions, as well as typically receive lower paid than their male counterparts. Furthermore, women's unique, indirect, and congenial conversational methods are perceived as unconfident, incompetent, and thus, incapable in the masculine organizational culture of most workplaces. Through the investigation of gender bias in the workplace, professionals and employers will gain an awareness of how gender bias and socially-prescribed gender roles can affect the workplace and interfere with women's success in their career. Technical communicators and other educators will have a better understanding of how to overcome gender stereotyping and be encouraged to teach students on how to be gender-neutral in their communications in the workplace, perhaps striving for a more egalitarian society.
ID: 031001392; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Title from PDF title page (viewed May 28, 2013).; Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-154).
M.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
English; Technical Communications

Managing diversity in the workplace is a challenging task for supervisors. Supervisors must punish negative behavior consistently, regardless their employees’ demographic characteristics. Some research suggests that negative workplace behaviors committed by lower status group members (e.g., Black people or women) are attributed to more internal factors and penalized more severely compared to higher status group members (e.g., White people or men; Duncan, 1979; Bowles & Gelfand, 2009; Luksyte, et al., 2013). However, recent evidence of pro-Black biases in judgments (Mendes & Koslov, 2013; Zigerell, 2018), challenge the perspective that evaluators are intentionally biased against Black people. If individuals deliberately compensate for pro-White biases by demonstrating pro-Black behaviors as some researchers suggest (Axt, et al., 2016), the negative workplace behaviors of Black employees may be punished less severely than white employees regardless of their gender or the reasons for their transgressions. The present research examined interactions between attribution, employee gender, and employee race when predicting punishment of negative workplace behaviors. In two studies, participants took the role of a supervisor and read descriptions of employees who violated workplace rules. In Study 1 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations, then responded to attribution, punishment type, punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. In Study 2 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations attributed to internal and external causes and responded to punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. Race and gender of the employees committing each offense were randomized within each participant so that they each rated all eight combinations of race, gender, and attribution (Study 2). Study 1 found support for the pro-Black bias, participants made more internal attributions for negative behavior committed by women and White employees and punished their negative workplace behaviors more severely. Unlike Study 1, participants in Study 2 did not make punishment decisions based on employee gender or race. Instead, participants punished behaviors based on their causal explanations; behaviors explained with internal causes were punished more severely than behaviors explained with external causes. Focusing on attribution reduced the propensity to discriminate in favor or against employees based on their demographic characteristics. While race and gender can impact punishments for workplace rule violations, learning more information about causal factors may reduce the likelihood of biased decisions.

Research indicates that the advancement of women into top management positions is steadily increasing. However, it seems as if gender divisions in the workforce do not encourage equal opportunities for women in the labor sector. In the world of sport, gender equity has been promoted with some progress. However, this progress, both globally and in South Africa, is still limited both quantitatively and qualitatively. There has been very little research on the experiences of women in leadership positions, specifically in the field of sport. This study explored the experiences of female sports administrators in the workplace. This study employed a qualitative research methodology. Purposive sampling was used to select suitable candidates in the field of sport and recreation in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data was collected by using semi-structured interviews and data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results indicate that participants in this study experience gender bias in the workplace in terms of differential treatment, organizational fit and harassment and intimidation. Conclusions and recommendations are also offered.

Explicit gender bias has been found using both experiments and field studies to favor men in hiring, promotion, and career opportunities (Eagly & Carli, 2007), but experimental studies have been criticized for over generalizing results obtained from a "stranger-to-stranger" paradigm (Copus, 2005; Landy, 2008). Landy (2008) argues that gender biases become negligible when raters are familiar with ratees. Additionally, Landy questioned the use of implicit measures to examine bias. Implicit or unconscious bias refers to a cognitive preference for one category over another, such as taking longer to associate female terms with managerial terms on a computerized task, and has also been shown to impact organizational decision making regarding women (Rudman & Kilianski, 2000). Implicit bias measures are often more predictive when bias may be socially undesirable. The goal of this research is to examine the effects of familiarity on automatic or unconscious gender bias. Study 1 examines associations between implicit and explicit measures of gender bias with evaluations of male and female job applicants who engage in agentic, negotiation behavior or not. It was expected that agentic (negotiating) female job applicants, compared to others, would suffer a backlash on ratings of communal traits and that this effect will be exacerbated by individual differences in implicit and explicit gender bias. An effect was found of negotiating being associated with higher agentic traits and lower overall ratings. Negotiating and gender did not interact, however the study did find women were rated as more communal than men. In Study 2 participants completed an Implicit Association Task (IAT) matching unfamiliar and familiar pictures of men and women with agentic and communal terms. It was expected that gender bias towards women would be stronger in the unfamiliar condition than in the familiar condition. Results indicated that there was a consistent bias against associating women with agentic terms and this effect was not influenced by familiarity. In Study 3, participants completed a gender-bias IAT and then read a scenario describing either a man or woman who is being evaluated for a promotion. They were asked to free recall positive and negative outcomes and attributes associated with the person in the scenario. It was expected that participants who have an implicit bias against women would remember negative events from the female scenario more easily than from the male scenario. There was a gender effect with participants remembering more negative events and less positive events when the employee was female compare to when the employee was male. Across all three studies differences were found between explicit and implicit measurements of gender bias. These three studies help us better understand relationships between implicit and explicit gender bias in the workplace. Additionally, Study 2 addressed criticism of gender bias findings ignoring familiarity.

The intersection of gender and early-career stage on the mental health of physicians is emerging and evident. This qualitative, interview-based study explores the perspectives of early-career female physicians regarding their mental health in the context of their work, their experiences with taking a leave of absence from work, and promising practices and supports that can support early-career female physicians in the workplace with regards to mental health and leaves of absence. Nine interviews with female physicians in the first ten years of practice in Ontario were conducted and analyzed thematically. A conceptual framework borrowed from the Healthy Professional Worker (HPW) Partnership was employed and revised based on the findings. The findings suggest that increased awareness of the challenges faced by early-career female physicians may contribute to the destigmatization of mental health and leaves of absence and foster supports at work. Policy makers and regulatory bodies should consider developing equitable leave of absence policies for physicians and reframing how seeking mental health care is viewed to contribute to positive culture change.

The proposed study explores the cognitive miser approach to perception formation in job interviews, as well as factors that may motivate people to not act as cognitive misers. Personality type (introverted and extraverted) and gender are characteristics of people that are associated with many stereotypes (Heilman, 2001; Andersen & Klatzky, 1987), and can have a large influence on an employer’s perception of an applicant, particularly when the employer is acting as a cognitive miser. It is hypothesized that in longer interviews, employers will be motivated to not act as cognitive misers, because they have more information about the applicant, have more of an opportunity to disconfirm any biases they may hold about the applicant, and experience greater liking toward the applicant. To test this, participants will conduct interviews with job applicants (who are actually confederates) and rate their perceptions of the applicants’ expected job performance. Participants will either conduct a long or short interview with a male introvert, a female introvert, a male extravert, or a female extravert. Job applicants will provide participants with the same information, although the information about personality type and the amount of information given will depend on the condition. It is predicted that participants who conduct shorter interviews will rate the applicants in line with popular stereotypes that favor extraverts over introverts, and males over females. Conversely, participants in longer interviews will be motivated to thoroughly think through their evaluations of the applicants, and there will be no significant difference in their ratings of male extraverts, female extraverts, male introverts, and female introverts.

Although blatant sexism persists in the workplace, there is a subtler type of sexism that is not often discussed. Some of the harmful outcomes that concern organization employees and leaders include decreased job satisfaction and morale, increased stress and turnover, damaged workplace relationships, barriers to career development for women, and decreased feelings of safety in law enforcement employees. Subtle sexism is often disguised as friendliness or chivalry, and therefore is difficult to detect, so it is often ignored or trivialized. The harms are cumulative and compound over time. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to gather data about how women experience subtle forms of sexism in the National Park Service (NPS) workplace. Semistructured telephone interviews assisted with the gathering of data from 12 women employed by the NPS. Feminist theory and critical theory guided the research process. Moustakas’s phenomenological method was used as an approach to data analysis. The findings that emerged included: (a) impacts on workplace culture, (b) harmful effects on individuals, (c) coping with subtle sexism, (d) organizational impacts, and (e) organizational change. The study promotes positive social change by providing a more nuanced understanding of how women experience and perceive subtle sexism. The results could help organizations to find more effective ways of dealing with this type of sexist behavior and decrease the negative outcomes.

Detta arbete undersöker kvinnors upplevelser av att arbeta på en genuskodad arbetsplats. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det finns skillnader i hur kvinnor upplever arbetet ombord på fartyg gentemot en genuskodad landbaserad verksamhet. För att besvara syftet genomfördes en kvalitativ undersökning med kvinnor som arbetar på mansdominerade arbetsplatser. Totalt sex intervjuer genomfördes tre med kvinnor som arbetar ombord på fartyg och tre med kvinnor anställda i genuskodade organisationer på land. Resultaten visar att alla respondenter upplevde att det på något sätt påverkar dem att arbeta på en genuskodad arbetsplats. Då respondenternas upplevelser jämfördes med bakgrund av om de arbetade på en landbasserad verksamhet eller ombord på ett fartyg visar resultatet på stora likheter och minimala skillnader.
This research is about womens' experiences of working on a male dominated/gender bias workplace. The object is is to answer how women experience working onboard a ship and if there are any diffrences to a male dominated/gender bias shore based activity. The method used is a qualitative research containing interviews with women in such workplaces. A total of six interviews were carried out with three respondents onboard ships and three respondents ashore. The result shows that it in some way affects that they work on a male dominated/gender bias workplace and there are mostly similarities and minor differences based on if the respondent is working onboard a ship or in shore.

Millions of workers today labor in nontraditional situations involving part-time work, temporary agency employment, and skills underutilization or face the precariousness of long-term unemployment. To date, research has largely focused on how these experiences shape workers' well-being, rather than how hiring agents perceive and treat job applicants who have moved through these positions. Shifting the focus from workers to hiring agents, this book explores how key gatekeepers evaluate workers with nonstandard, mismatched, or precarious employment experience. Factoring in the social groups to which workers belong—such as their race and gender—the book shows how workers get jobs, how the hiring process unfolds, who makes the cut, and who does not. The book documents and unpacks three important discoveries. Hiring professionals extract distinct meanings from different types of employment experiences; the effects of nonstandard, mismatched, and precarious employment histories for workers' job outcomes are not all the same; and the race and gender of workers intersect with their employment histories to shape which workers get called back for jobs. Indeed, hiring professionals use group-based stereotypes to weave divergent narratives or “stratified stories” about workers with similar employment experiences. The result is a complex set of inequalities in the labor market. Looking at bias and discrimination, social exclusion in the workplace, and the changing nature of work, the book probes the hiring process and offers a clearer picture of the underpinnings of getting a job in the new economy.

This chapter explores the way that gender influences and blocks ambition. Despite recent progress, women still are grossly underrepresented at the top and overrepresented at the bottom in measures of power and economic reward. In explaining these disparities, research suggests that while women may be more ambivalent about ambition than men and ambitious for somewhat different things, the primary explanation for their different achievements lies elsewhere: in gender bias, stereotypes, and socialization patterns; and in inequalities in family responsibilities and inadequacies in workplace policies. Discussion focuses on the special obstacles to ambition for women of color, women leaders, and women politicians. Gender differences in mentors, sponsors, and allies and in the incidence of sexual harassment and online abuse compound the problems. These inequalities are not only unjust for individuals, but they also impair organizational performance. The chapter closes with strategies for ambitious women and for organizations seeking greater equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Gender bias retards economic growth. In India women face gender discrimination, specifically male bias, both within the household and in the workplace. It is widely assumed that microfinance will have a positive impact on women's income, employment, self-worth through self-help group. Further, it has a strong positive effect on women empowerment and thereby reduces gender discrimination prevailing in the society. In this chapter, the extent of vulnerability between male and female SHG members have examined using vulnerability index, which is constructed considering different quantitative and subjective issues. For this, the micro level data have been collected from the state of West Bengal (India). The index value in the study shows that female is 56% more vulnerable than male even after joining in SHG and, therefore, requires large policy attention and intervention from different agencies to minimize such discrimination.

Women experience gender stereotyping at the workplace not only by men but also by other women. Despite an increase in diversity and equality at the workplace, women in India still face gender bias and are represented less at boardroom level. According to an annual survey by Grant Thornton (2017), India ranks third lowest in the proportion of business leadership roles held by women. Though gender roles in India are changing, women in top positions are still facing various hindrances. The higher the position a woman holds in an organization, harsher are the judgments made if her clothing is perceived as inappropriate (Pine, 2014). Thus this chapter sheds light on how women managers on a daily basis use attire to manage their identities.

The USA and Denmark are leading information communications technologies (ICT)-enabled economies and have a variety of policies to promote women in ICT occupations, but both report that just roughly 25% of math and computing jobs in their respective countries are held by women, a number that continues to decline. The trend is odd given that the ICT industry globally notes a growing shortage of workers as well as a potential for lost revenue if positions go unfilled. Given the situation and a significant evidence that women's participation in companies is associated with greater profitability, one would assume ICT companies to be profit-maximizing and thus do more to attract and retain women. The trends are also odd given that the participation of women in scientific occupations in the life, physical, and social sciences are increasing overall. This chapter briefly reviews the situation and recommendations to address it, including increasing mentorship for women and recognizing and addressing bias in the workplace.

A cohort study is one in which the outcome (usually disease status) is ascertained for groups of individuals defined on the basis of their exposure. At the time exposure status is determined, all must be free of the disease. All eligible participants are then followed up over time. Since exposure status is determined before the occurrence of the outcome, a cohort study can clarify the temporal sequence between exposure and outcome, with minimal information bias. The historical and the population cohort study (Box 9.1) are efficient variants of the classical cohort study described above, which nevertheless retain the essential components of the cohort study design. The exposure can be dichotomous [i.e. exposed (to obstetric complications at birth) vs. not exposed], or graded as degrees of exposure (e.g. no recent life events, one to two life events, three or more life events). The use of grades of exposure strengthens the results of a cohort study by supporting or refuting the hypothesis that the incidence of the disease increases with increasing exposure to the risk factor; a so-called dose–response relationship. The essential features of a cohort study are: ♦ participants are defined by their exposure status rather than by outcome (as in case–control design); ♦ it is a longitudinal design: exposure status must be ascertained before outcome is known. The classical cohort study In a classical cohort study participants are selected for study on the basis of a single exposure of interest. This might be exposure to a relatively rare occupational exposure, such as ionizing radiation (through working in the nuclear power industry). Care must be taken in selecting the unexposed cohort; perhaps those working in similar industries, but without any exposure to radiation. The outcome in this case might be leukaemia. All those in the exposed and unexposed cohorts would need to be free of leukaemia (hence ‘at risk’) on recruitment into the study. The two cohorts would then be followed up for (say) 10 years and rates at which they develop leukaemia compared directly. Classical cohort studies are rare in psychiatric epidemiology. This may be in part because this type of study is especially suited to occupational exposures, which have previously been relatively little studied as causes of mental illness. However, this may change as the high prevalence of mental disorders in the workplace and their negative impact upon productivity are increasingly recognized. The UK Gulf War Study could be taken as one rather unusual example of the genre (Unwin et al. 1999). Health outcomes, including mental health status, were compared between those who were deployed in the Persian Gulf War in 1990–91, those who were later deployed in Bosnia, and an ‘era control group’ who were serving at the time of the Gulf war but were not deployed. There are two main variations on this classical cohort study design: they are popular as they can, depending on circumstances, be more efficient than the classical cohort design. The population cohort study In the classical cohort study, participants are selected on the basis of exposure, and the hypothesis relates to the effect of this single exposure on a health outcome. However, a large cohort or panel of subjects are sometimes recruited and followed up, often over many years, to study multiple exposures and outcomes. No separate comparison group is required as the comparison group is generally an unexposed sub-group of the panel. Examples include the British Doctor's Study in which over 30,000 British doctors were followed up for over 20 years to study the effects of smoking and other exposures on health (Doll et al. 1994), and the Framingham Heart Study, in which residents of a town in Massachusetts, USA have been followed up for 50 years to study risk factors for coronary heart disease (Wolf et al. 1988). The Whitehall and Whitehall II studies in the UK (Fuhrer et al. 1999; Stansfeld et al. 2002) were based again on an occupationally defined cohort, and have led to important findings concerning workplace conditions and both physical and psychiatric morbidity. Birth cohort studies, in which everyone born within a certain chronological interval are recruited, are another example of this type of study. In birth cohorts, participants are commonly followed up at intervals of 5–10 years. Many recent panel studies in the UK and elsewhere have been funded on condition that investigators archive the data for public access, in order that the dataset might be more fully exploited by the wider academic community. Population cohort studies can test multiple hypotheses, and are far more common than any other type of cohort study. The scope of the study can readily be extended to include mental health outcomes. Thus, both the British Doctor's Study (Doll et al. 2000) and the Framingham Heart Study (Seshadri et al. 2002) have gone on to report on aetiological factors for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease as the cohorts passed into the age groups most at risk for these disorders. A variant of the population cohort study is one in which those who are prevalent cases of the outcome of interest at baseline are also followed up effectively as a separate cohort in order (a) to study the natural history of the disorder by estimating its maintenance (or recovery) rate, and (b) studying risk factors for maintenance (non-recovery) over the follow-up period (Prince et al. 1998). Historical cohort studies In the classical cohort study outcome is ascertained prospectively. Thus, new cases are ascertained over a follow-up period, after the exposure status has been determined. However, it is possible to ascertain both outcome and exposure retrospectively. This variant is referred to as a historical cohort study (Fig. 9.1). A good example is the work of David Barker in testing his low birth weight hypothesis (Barker et al. 1990; Hales et al. 1991). Barker hypothesized that risk for midlife vascular and endocrine disorders would be determined to some extent by the ‘programming’ of the hypothalamo-pituitary axis through foetal growth in utero. Thus ‘small for dates’ babies would have higher blood pressure levels in adult life, and greater risk for type II diabetes (through insulin resistance). A prospective cohort study would have recruited participants at birth, when exposure (birth weight) would be recorded. They would then be followed up over four or five decades to examine the effect of birth weight on the development of hypertension and type II diabetes. Barker took the more elegant (and feasible) approach of identifying hospitals in the UK where several decades previously birth records were meticulously recorded. He then traced the babies as adults (where they still lived in the same area) and measured directly their status with respect to outcome. The ‘prospective’ element of such studies is that exposure was recorded well before outcome even though both were ascertained retrospectively with respect to the timing of the study. The historical cohort study has also proved useful in psychiatric epidemiology where it has been used in particular to test the neurodevelopmental hypothesis for schizophrenia (Jones et al. 1994; Isohanni et al. 2001). Jones et al. studied associations between adult-onset schizophrenia and childhood sociodemographic, neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and behavioural factors in the UK 1946 birth cohort; 5362 people born in the week 3–9 March 1946, and followed up intermittently since then. Subsequent onsets of schizophrenia were identified in three ways: (a) routine data: cohort members were linked to the register of the Mental Health Enquiry for England in which mental health service contacts between 1974 and 1986 were recorded; (b) cohort data: hospital and GP contacts (and the reasons for these contacts) were routinely reported at the intermittent resurveys of the cohort; (c) all cohort participants identified as possible cases of schizophrenia were given a detailed clinical interview (Present State examination) at age 36. Milestones of motor development were reached later in cases than in non-cases, particularly walking. Cases also had more speech problems than had noncases. Low educational test scores at ages 8,11, and 15 years were a risk factor. A preference for solitary play at ages 4 and 6 years predicted schizophrenia. A health visitor's rating of the mother as having below average mothering skills and understanding of her child at age 4 years was a predictor of schizophrenia in that child. Jones concluded ‘differences between children destined to develop schizophrenia as adults and the general population were found across a range of developmental domains. As with some other adult illnesses, the origins of schizophrenia may be found in early life’. Jones' findings were largely confirmed in a very similar historical cohort study in Finland (Isohanni et al. 2001); a 31 year follow-up of the 1966 North Finland birth cohort (n = 12,058). Onsets of schizophrenia were ascertained from a national hospital discharge register. The ages at learning to stand, walk and become potty-trained were each related to subsequent incidence of schizophrenia and other psychoses. Earlier milestones reduced, and later milestones increased, the risk in a linear manner. These developmental effects were not seen for non-psychotic outcomes. The findings support hypotheses regarding psychosis as having a developmental dimension with precursors apparent in early life. There are many conveniences to this approach for the contemporary investigator. ♦ The exposure data has already been collected for you. ♦ The follow-up period has already elapsed. ♦ The design maintains the essential feature of the cohort study, namely that information bias with respect to the assessment of the exposure should not be a problem. ♦ As with the Barker hypothesis example, historical cohort studies are particularly useful for investigating associations across the life course, when there is a long latency between hypothesized exposure and outcome. Despite these important advantages, such retrospective studies are often limited by reliance on historical data that was collected routinely for other purposes; often these data will be inaccurate or incomplete. Also information about possible confounders, such as smoking or diet, may be inadequate.