A life course perspective can be applied to any discipline - it simply entails taking account of a person's entire life, not isolating sections. Much research has looked cross-sectionally at people's lives, but as more and more longitudinal research is carried out, it has become clear that the different epochs of a life influence one another.

In medicine this idea is well established, for example, linking the age at which people start smoking with lung cancer rates. In social science it is less well developed. Nevertheless, the applications for prevention and intervention with young people are clear - what can we do now to alleviate future problems?

Researchers using this perspective highlight the links between the different stages of life, attempting to establish if there are connections or not.