Does this seem odd?

Does this seem strange at all?
From The Wall Street Journal, Friday, September 30, 2005

In the world wide section of today's Journal I spotted this small blurb.

Quote "Recruiting began for the biggest federal study of U.S. children ever, in which 100,000 in 105 localities are to be monitored from birth to age 21"
Now.. does that seem to peak anyone else's interest at all? Or am I just reading into it?
Can anyone shed some light or insight on this please.
www.wsj.com
Oh and if this thread is in the wrong area, Mods, please feel free to move it, thanks

Could not find the article, can you give a direct link?

After searching on wsj.com and google.com I was unable to find a link, as I said its just a small blurb on the front page of the journal in the world wide section, which I quoted word for word. i'll try to find as much as I can..

Keep looking, however it is not uncommon for research to be conducted on a populataion for many years. Many such studies are already underway and have been tracked for decades. From premature infants to children with asthma etc etc. It can yeild a wealth of data and also show what really worked long term and what did not.

I saw that on CNN last night. I will see if I can find a link to the story.

All of the volunteers are pregnant this year.

My wife has been part of a study all her life. They send her a survey once per year to be filled out. There are like 100 questions concerning everything about everything. I believe its a female only study. They pay her for it too.

I dont recall the name of it though.

I dont think these things are wierd. At some point or another there need to be studies.

This kind of study is called a longitudinal cohort study. They are not rare, but not very common because of the time and money involved. They are very valuable in terms of tracking long term trends among the target population relative to given variables.


[edit on 2005/9/30 by GradyPhilpott]

These kinds of study populations can be used for anything. They could be looking at the correlation between family income and overall health, the incidence of certain types of cancer and varying levels of prenatal care, or correlations between breast-feeding and future success, anything really. Its a bit of a stretch to say that there's something insidious about it, long term studies go on all the time and are completely voluntary btw.

Thanks for all the information you guys.. and stacey :p.. glad someone out there knows what these things are for, as I'm a migrant to the USA from Australia I hadn't heard of one of these studies. thanks for clearing it up.

[edit on 30-9-2005 by Ox]