Results from Sweep 2

The findings from the second year of GUS were published in February. Adam Ingram MSP, Minister for Children and Early Years launched the findings at a conference in Edinburgh attended by 150 people from a wide range of organisations. He welcomed the findings and explained how they would be used to inform the development of the Scottish Government’s Early Years Framework. You can watch a video of the Minister and other presentations at the launch through the GUS website: www.growingupinscotland.org.uk

The following Year 2 publications can also be downloaded from the website:
• GUS Year 2 Main Report
• GUS Year 2 Summary Findings
• Experiences of pre-school education - GUS Year 2 Topic Research Findings
• Issues of child health and development - GUS Year 2 Topic Research Findings
• Parenting styles and parental support - GUS Year 2 Topic Research Findings

We want to make sure that as many people as possible hear about the GUS study so they can consider how the findings may inform the work they do. Articles have been published in magazines aimed at those working in the early years sector and at parents. Also, researchers from ScotCen will be presenting the findings to various groups over the coming months.

Looking in more detail at Sweep 1

We looked in more detail at the first year interview data to find out more about some areas that are particularly important to policy-makers. Three reports were produced from this analysis:

• Exploring the experiences and outcomes for advantaged and disadvantaged families
• Use of informal support by families with young children
• Growing up in rural Scotland

These reports can be downloaded from the GUS website, research findings page.

Breastfeeding is another area where there has been some more analysis of the year one data. A PhD student has been looking at breastfeeding as part of a project looking at what GUS can tell us about food and families (see GUS website, Using GUS data page for more detail). Research Briefing 36 ‘Breastfeeding in Scotland: the impact of advice for mothers’ is published on the CRFR website:
www.crfr.ac.uk/Reports/rb36forweb.pdf

Readers may also be interested in the report ‘Millennium Cohort Study: Exploration of some distinctive results for Scotland’ edited by Shirley Dex, published by The Scottish Government. This report takes three distinctive differences in the MCS Scotland data (children's cognitive scores, family poverty and incidents of breastfeeding) and provides further analysis to examine whether the results are due to differences in the characteristics of MCS families in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/12/18133613/0

GUS in the media

The Sunday Herald and The Scotsman published stories about GUS when the Year 2 findings became available. The Growing up in Rural Scotland Topic Report also featured in The Herald. These articles are available through the GUS website.

Data Linkage

Linking survey information with administrative data has always been a key aim of GUS and data linkage forms part of the wider research design. As yet, consent to link into administrative databases has not been collected. However, at Sweep 4, parents are being asked for their permission to allow us to extract routine administrative data about the child, and where appropriate, the child’s natural mother, from health records held by the Information Services Division of the NHS. With regard to the child, this will provide information collected as part of the ISD’s Child Health Surveillance Pre-School programme which includes data about the birth and from Public Health Nurse (Health Visitor) visits. Information on hospital admissions and immunisations will also be available. Maternal data will be restricted to details of the pregnancy and birth of the cohort child.

Links to other longitudinal studies

GUS is just one of many studies of this type taking place across the world. Here are some examples of studies taking place elsewhere:

Growing Up in Australia - www.aifs.gov.au/growingup/

US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/

Growing Up in Ireland - www.growingup.ie/

Millennium Cohort Study - www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/studies.asp?section=000100020001

GUS – what happens next?

Beyond Sweep 4, we expect that the families of the younger children will be interviewed until their child is nearly 6, providing very detailed information on the early years for both of our groups of children. After this point, the expectation is that families (and children) will be interviewed at key transition stages as they get older, for example before and after making the transition from primary school to secondary school.

GUS Contacts

Sinéad Power, Project Manager, The Scottish Government
sinead.power@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Paul Bradshaw, Research Director, The Scottish Centre for Social Research
p.bradshaw@scotcen.org.uk

Lesley Kelly, GUS Dissemination Officer, CRFR, Edinburgh University
lesley.kelly@ed.ac.uk

If you no longer wish to receive information about GUS, please contact lesley.kelly@ed.ac.uk to be taken off the e-mail list. GUS is funded by The Scottish Government and is being carried out by The Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen) in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) at the University of Edinburgh.