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All about GUS Who is carrying out the research? What are the areas of interest? How often will the interviews take place? How was the study sample selected? What age are the children over the course of the study? Which
areas of Scotland are being sampled and why? GUS is a large scale longitudinal and cross sectional study. This means that it will provide information about how circumstances and experiences for children in Scotland are changing and will also provide data about 'outcomes' for children and the factors that influence outcomes. What are the areas of interest? The focus of interest in the study lies in the
characteristics, circumstances and experiences of Scotland’s
children in their early years and subsequently through to adolescence.
The main areas to be monitored and evaluated will be: The idea for GUS grew out of a longitudinal scoping study commissioned by the then Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) in 2000 which highlighted a lack of existing data relating to two important developmental phases in children's lives - early years and the transition into adolescence. The Scottish Government would like every child in Scotland to have the best start in life and to reach their full potential. In order to do this, they need to know more about children's circumstances; the opportunities, difficulties and challenges that they face and what happens in their lives as they are growing up. Through this long term monitoring and evaluation of its policies for children, with a specific focus on the early years, the Scottish Government, together with the wider research community, will be better informed about the lives of Scotland's families. Initially the child’s main carer will be interviewed. During subsequent 'sweeps' of data collection, the main carer's resident partner may also be invited to take part in a separate interview. As the children become older, they may also be asked to take part in an interview or to complete a questionnaire. How often will the interviews take place? During the first phase of GUS families were visited by an interviewer every year until the child reached 5 years old. During phase 2 of GUS (from 2010) families will be visited less frequently, at key stages in the child’s development or just after 'transitions' (for example, after starting primary school or secondary school). The data is collected by a study interviewer
who conducts a face-to-face interview with the child's main
carer
and simultaneously enters their responses directly into a laptop
computer. Most of the questions are interviewer-administered,
although a few use self-completion methods, with participants
reading
questions and entering responses directly into laptops (a data
collection approach known as CASI (Computer Assisted Self Interviewing). The sample was drawn from Child Benefits Records (CBR) held by the Department of Work and Pensions, which is a method that has been widely used for other recent studies of this kind (including the UK Millenium Cohort Study, the Families and Children Survey, the and the Childcare Survey). Since Child Benefit has a very high level of uptake, (usually around 97%), the CBR is the best available sample for a study of this kind. How many are taking part?
(brackets show ages at which data is not collected) For phase 1 of GUS, 130 areas across Scotland were selected at random. Each area was controlled to give an average of 57 births. In order to accommodate a representative random sample of children which could be accessed efficiently by the interviewers from the study, a process known as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) was selected. These units enable the fieldwork to be efficiently managed by the study’s interviewers since the selected families are clustered in particular geographic areas. The PSUs will be based on aggregations of Data Zones which are newly geographic units being increasingly used as the basis of neighbourhood statistics in Scotland. These Data Zones were randomly selected within a stratification scheme based on region and deprivation. Within these sample PSUs, all eligible children are then sampled for the 0-1 cohort and 3/5ths of all eligible children are selected for the 2-3 cohort. Where a 0-1 year old child has a sibling aged 2-3, one child is selected at random.
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