Biosocial research is concerned with the dynamic interplays between biology and experiences and behaviours over the course of a person’s lifetime, with the aim of enabling our understanding of the complex pathways and mechanisms that shape physical and mental health, social behaviours and outcomes, and genomic, neurological and physiological systems1.
Biosocial research is both and old and new science. Rudolf Virchov, who believed “Medicine is a social science; and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale” studied how the social becomes biological in the 19th century through his identification of the specific social conditions in Prussia that made typhus endemic2. What is new is the open access to high quality data on the social environment together with biological measurements. Recent developments in the social sciences in relation to biosocial research include new biosocial datasets (e.g. Understanding Society, and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing), the ESRC framework on Biosocial Research, and the increase in funding schemes for biosocial research.
These biosocial datasets allow us to understand the two way relationships between our social and economic circumstances and our health as they include detailed measures of both social factors and health. This represents an advance on the available data as too often medical or clinical studies provide rich information on different aspects of health, but little on the social environment, while social studies have provided rich data on every aspect of people’s lives but only a few general questions on health. The biosocial data resources collect ‘biomarkers’, i.e. objective indicators of biological processes, which provide new information on different dimensions of health than questionnaire data and tell us about people having or being at risk of an illness before they experience any symptoms.
There have also been recent developments in biosocial methods. There have been huge advances in methods and data collection. For example, there are new ways of collecting biological data that are less intrusive for survey participants (through hair or blood spots) and increasing validation of these new methods of data collection against so-called gold standard methods. In the social sciences, advances in the analysis of mixed mode survey designs (web, telephone, in person) alongside auxiliary sources of data have been made. Alongside the development of these new methods, within disciplines, there have been new scientific discoveries, linking biological data such as genetic characteristics to health and social outcomes. These new discoveries give us greater insight into the ‘dynamic interplays between biology, experiences and behaviours over the course of a person’s lifetime’ to which ESRC refers. Furthermore, there have been some advances in new conceptual and theoretical models on biosocial research. An ‘ABCDE’ of Biosocial research has been developed, referring to the interplay between ‘Alleles, Brains, Bodies, Contexts and Experience’ over the life-course3. A framework for how the social become biological outlines some concepts and principles useful for biosocial research4. However, considerable methodological challenges remain:
• Newer biomarkers covering genomics, epigenetics and metabolomics are also increasingly available in such datasets, for which standard protocols of measurement and analysis are still being developed.
• Missing data remains a significant problem for many biosocial datasets, with much higher proportions of missing biological data (especially for sensitive measures like blood and genetics based measures) compared to missing survey data. This missing data problem becomes amplified with longitudinal biosocial data.
• There is a need to develop common language and understanding across disciplines. Very often, disciplinary specific terms (e.g. socio-economic status, embeddinge, resilience) mean something quite different in other disciplines.
• Much of biosocial research is about showing associations, and yet very often causal processes are inferred. This can be seen in popular descriptions of biosocial research (‘cells to society’ or ‘neurons to neighbourhoods’), which do not appear to take into account processes going from the society or neighbourhoods to biological outcomes.
• Most PhD research training is largely within disciplinary contexts. Interdisplinary PhDs are rare and also not easy to do.
In 2016, NCRM hosted an Autumn School in collaboration with Understanding Society and the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health on the use of biomarkers in social science research. NCRM currently funds two biosocial research programmes, one on missing data approaches on biosocial research5, another on combining social science and molecular genetic research to examine inequality and the life course6. We have a number of planned events for 2017, including a one-day workshop on biosocial research in March. We will also be working closely with the new Centre of Doctoral Training on Social-Biological research.
There is a need for more research and training events in biosocial research. Letting social scientists analyse biological data without sufficient sensitivity to the data and related inferences could result in erroneous reports and publications. The same can also be said of biological scientists who construct ‘social phenotypes’ from a variety of data sources, without being sensitive to the different meanings and contexts of these social data. What is also becoming quite clear is that while some amount of interdisciplinary training is important, we also need experts to work together and not in silos. This is because advances within certain biological disciplines are so quick, that a considerable amount of disciplinary expertise is needed to keep abreast of the latest developments in research and methods.
References
1. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/research/framework-to-enable-biosocial-research-pdf/
2. https://blog.esrc.ac.uk/2016/08/12/how-to-combine-sociology-with-biology/
3. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/news-events-and-publications/publications/magazines-and-newsletters/society-now/society-now-issue-24/
4. Blane D, Kelly-Irving M, d’Errico A, Bartley M, Montgomery S. Social-biological transitions: how does the social become biological? Longitudinal and Life Course Studies: International Journal. 2013;4:136–46
5. http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/WP3/wp3.php
6. http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/SoCGEN/