A growing volume of research from global data demonstrates that institutional care under conditions of deprivation is profoundly damaging to children, particularly during the critical early years of development. However, how these individuals develop over a life course remains unclear. This study uses data from a survey on the health and development of 420 children mostly under the age of three, placed in 12 infant care institutions between 1958 and 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland. The children exhibited significant delays in cognitive, social, and motor development in the first years of life. Moreover, a follow-up of a subsample of 143 children about 10 years later revealed persistent difficulties, including depression, school related-problems, and stereotypies. Between 2019 and 2021, these formerly institutionalized study participants were located through the Swiss population registry and invited to participate once again in the research project. Now in their early sixties, they are studied for their health, further development, and life-course trajectories. A mixed-methods approach using questionnaires, neuropsychological assessments, and narrative biographical interviews was implemented by a multidisciplinary team. Combining prospective and retrospective data with standardized quantitative and biographical qualitative data allows a rich reconstruction of life histories. The availability of a community sample from the same geographic location, the 1954–1961 cohort of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies, described in detail in a paper in this issue (Wehrle et al., 2020), enables comparison with an unaffected cohort. This article describes the study design and study participants in detail and discusses the potential and limitations of a comparison with a community sample. It outlines a set of challenges and solutions encountered in the process of a lifespan longitudinal study from early childhood into the cusp of old age with a potentially vulnerable sample and summarizes the lessons learned along the way.

越来越多的全球数据研究表明，贫困条件下的机构照料对儿童造成严重损害，特别是在发育的关键早期阶段。然而，这些个体在生命历程中如何发展仍不清楚。本研究使用的数据来自对 1958 年至 1961 年间安置在瑞士苏黎世 12 个婴儿护理机构的 420 名儿童（大多年龄在三岁以下）的健康和发育情况的调查。这些孩子在生命的最初几年表现出认知、社交和运动发育的显着延迟。此外，大约 10 年后对 143 名儿童的子样本进行的随访显示出持续存在的困难，包括抑郁、学校相关问题和刻板印象。2019 年至 2021 年间，通过瑞士人口登记处找到了这些以前被机构化的研究参与者，并受邀再次参与该研究项目。如今，他们已经六十出头，人们对他们的健康、进一步发展和生命历程进行了研究。多学科团队采用了混合方法，包括问卷调查、神经心理学评估和叙述性传记访谈。将前瞻性和回顾性数据与标准化定量和传记定性数据相结合，可以对生活史进行丰富的重建。来自同一地理位置的社区样本的可用性，即 1954-1961 年苏黎世纵向研究队列，本期的一篇论文对此进行了详细描述（韦尔勒等人，2020），可以与未受影响的队列进行比较。本文详细描述了研究设计和研究参与者，并讨论了与社区样本进行比较的潜力和局限性。它概述了在对潜在脆弱样本进行从幼儿期到老年的生命周期纵向研究过程中遇到的一系列挑战和解决方案，并总结了在此过程中吸取的教训。