Why have I been chosen to take part?

To visit every family with young children would take too long and be too costly, so we have selected a number of families at random from every family that receives child benefit. We have taken extra special care to ensure that, taken together, all the families and children we have chosen are representative of all families and children in Scotland. The project will look at the experiences of children in all areas of Scotland.

We started in 2005 with two groups of children:

• Babies born between June 2004 and May 2005
• Children aged between two and three years old born between June 2002 and May 2003

In 2010/11, we selected a further group of 6000 babies born between March 2010 and February 2011.

In total, around 14,000 children from all over the country have been chosen. Each child and family that is selected is an important part of our overall picture and therefore, if a family cannot take part for any reason, they cannot be replaced by another family.

You might find that some of your neighbours will also have been invited to take part. This is because we have randomly selected certain areas on which to focus (this includes your neighbourhood). The areas we have chosen are right across the country, so that when all the interviews have finished, we will have collected information from people who live right across Scotland in the full range of different neighbourhoods.

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