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All about GUS
What
type of study is it?
What are the areas of interest?
Why is the study happening?
Who is being interviewed?
How
often will the interviews take place?
How is the data collected?
How was the study sample
selected?
How many are taking part?
What age are the children
over the course of the study?
Which
areas of Scotland are being sampled and why?
What
type of study is it?
GUS is a large scale longitudinal and
cross sectional study.
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:
• childcare,
• education
• social work
• health
• social inclusion
Why is the study happening?
The idea for the Growing
Up in Scotland study (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 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.
Who is being interviewed?
Initially the child’s main carer will be
interviewed. In tthe second sweep of the study, the main carers's
resident partner will also be invited to take part in a separate
study interview.
How often will
the interviews take place?
The families will be visited by an interviewer
from the study every year until the child is 5 years old and subsequently,
at key stages in the child’s development
How is the data collected?
The data will be collected by a study interviewer
who will conduct face-to-face interviews with the child's main carer
and will simultaneously enter their responses directly into a laptop
computer.
This system is know as CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing).
Most of the questions are interviewer-administered,
although a few use self-completion methods, with participants reading
questions and keying responses, directly into laptops (a data collection
approach known as CASI (Computer Assisted Self Interviewing).
How was the study sample selected?
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 Millenium Cohort Study, the Families and Children Survey, the
Survey of Parents of Three and Four Year Olds, and the current 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?
8,000 children were enrolled into the study in 2005-06
5,000 were babies (~10 months) born between June 2004 and May
2005
3,000 were toddlers (~34 months) born between June 2002 and May
2003.
What age are the children over the course of the study?
| |
Babies |
Toddlers |
| 2005/06 |
Age 0-1 |
Age 2-3 |
| 2006/07 |
Age 1-2 |
Age 3-4 |
| 2007/08 |
Age 2-3 |
Age 4-5 |
| 2008/09 |
Age 3-4 |
Age 5-6 |
Which areas of
Scotland were sampled and why?
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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