Year
4 progress
Reporting Year 3 - the format is changing
Sweep 2 data
Beyond Sweep 4 - what happens next?
New GUS Research Briefings
Using GUS findings - a guide for Local Authorities
A visit from down under
Research links
GUS e-mail interest group
GUS Contacts
Year 4 progress
The fourth round of annual interviews with our participating families was launched in April 2008 and so we are now half way through the fieldwork for sweep 4. Our younger children (the birth cohort) are now aged just under 4 while the older children (the child cohort) are just under 6. Key topics at this sweep include the transition to and early experiences of primary school for the child cohort, and pre-school for the birth cohort. Height and weight measurements are being taken from all the children this year so that the researchers can calculate Body Mass Index to track trends in obesity. Parents are also being asked for their consent to link the survey data to routine information in NHS health records such as records of immunisations and hospital admissions. Response to and support for GUS continues to be high among respondents and we expect this to continue until the sweep 4 fieldwork ends in May 2009.
Reporting Year 3 - the fomat is changing
Our approach to reporting is changing for sweep 3. For Years 1 and 2, the research team produced a single report of considerable length summarising main findings across the whole of the data collected. For year 3 we will be producing a series of shorter, more focused, topic-based reports. These reports will draw on the new data from sweep 3, but will also draw on data from previous sweeps to look at change over time, and will start to look at longitudinal relationships between earlier situations and later outcomes for children.
The topics agreed so far include:
• non-resident parents and changing patterns of contact;
• relationships between food, eating and physical activity;
• patterns of childcare use including
- consideration of the effects of using more than one childcare provider
on outcomes for children
- parents’ preferences
- the specific characteristics of families using multiple childcare providers
in relation to employment patterns, area characteristics, and access
to informal support;
• parenting in the community context which will consider parents’ views about their local area including access to and appraisal of local services, levels of neighbourhood satisfaction and the child-friendliness of the area and how these vary by key individual and area characteristics such as deprivation, urban-rural classification and housing tenure.
Other topics being considered include a detailed examination of the role of grandparents, and an exploration of the impact of different parenting styles on cognitive development. Two reports will be published in December, with further reports published early in 2009.
Sweep 2 data
The data from sweep 2 of GUS will be available to download free of charge
from ESDS (Economic and Social Data Service) from November 2008. All
information collected from our participants is kept strictly confidential.
The data is thoroughly checked to ensure that no individuals can be identified
from the details they provided at the interview.
We would like to establish a users community for GUS. Please let us
know if you are using GUS data to inform your research (see Using GUS
data page on our website www.growingupinscotland.org.uk)
Beyond
Sweep 4 - what happens next?
The Scottish Government is delighted to announce that it has commissioned
the Scottish Centre for Social Research as the lead contractors for the
next stage of the GUS Survey. ScotCen have been contracted for the following
work:
2009/10 - Sweep 5 - Birth Cohort
2010/11 - Sweep 6 - Birth Cohort
2011/12 - Introduction of new Birth Cohort
2012/13 - Sweep 7 - Birth cohort
ScotCen will also work with the Scottish Government to review GUS and
consider how it should be developed in the future.
New
GUS Research Briefings
Following on from the three Additional Topic Reports produced from sweep
1, three new GUS Research Briefings have been published on our website:
• Growing up in rural
Scotland
• The use of informal support by families with young children
•
Scotland’s families – advantage and disadvantage
These 2-page Briefings aim to make the research findings more accessible to non-academic audiences, particularly practitioners. Please spread the word if you think these will be of interest to others you work with.
To download the Briefings, please visit our website, Research Findings
page:
www.growingupinscotland.org.uk
Using
GUS Findings - a guide for Local Authorities
This guide suggests how the findings from GUS might be used to inform
the planning and delivery of services for children and their families
at the local level. It may be of relevance to Local Authorities, Health
Boards and voluntary organisations. The guide can be downloaded from
our website.
How the Scottish Government is using GUS
Health Inequalities and the Early Years
Findings from GUS have been used to inform the following report produced
by The Scottish Government:
‘The Effectiveness of Interventions to Address Health Inequalities in
the Early Years: A review of relevant literature’
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/07/08102811/13
Infant Nutrition
Ruth Campbell was appointed to the role of national Infant Nutrition
Co-ordinator in May this year. Prior to this, Ruth worked in NHS Lanarkshire
as Public Health Nutritionist. The remit for this new post includes improving
maternal nutrition, breastfeeding and feeding of children up to the age
of 2 years. The findings on breastfeeding from Sweep 1 of GUS and the
information about toddlers' eating habits from Sweep 2 have been helpful
in setting the context for future strategies to improve nutrition for
young children in Scotland.
A key function of Ruth's role is to develop an infant feeding strategy
for Scotland and to support Health Board's in achieving the HEAT target
to increase the proportion of babies exclusively breastfed at 6-8 weeks
from 26.6% in 2006/07 to 33.3% by 2010/11. Ruth is working with NHS
Health Scotland on a range of activities including production of a
DVD on breastfeeding that will be issued to all pregnant women. NHS
Health Scotland plan to host a conference to share practice to promote
breastfeeding during national Breastfeeding Awareness Week in May next
year and it is hoped that findings from sweep 1 of the Growing Up in
Scotland study will be presented. The Scottish Government has recently
made available £19 million over the next 3 years for Health Boards
to improve maternal and child nutrition in areas of deprivation.
A visit from down under
Carol Soloff, Project Manager for ‘Growing Up in Australia’ dropped in to see the GUS team while on a recent visit to Scotland. There are many similarities between GUS and the Australian Study. LSAC (Longitudinal Study of Australian Children) was launched in 2004 and is also following 2 groups of children - a birth cohort of around 5,000 children aged less than one at ‘Wave 1’ and an older cohort of 5,000 children aged 4 years at Wave 1. However, families are visited less frequently (every 2 years). Carol provided some useful information about her experiences managing the project. Research publications and papers associated with LSAC can be accessed from their website:
http://www.aifs.gov.au/growingup/
Research links
We have recently added a links page to the GUS website to connect those interested with other longitudinal research studies taking place across the world.
Here are some links to recent publications from other longitudinal studies:
‘Diversity, complexity and change in parenting’
(from ALSPAC – the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children)
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/2247.asp
‘Now we are 50: key
findings from the National Child Development Study’
http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/news.asp?section=000100010003&item=449
GUS
e-mail interest group
We will shortly be writing to all those who have signed up to receive
information about the study to ask more about your areas of interest.
This will allow us to target our information and publications more effectively.
GUS
Contacts
Sinead 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.