Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Surveying Children and Young People 3 |
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| Convenor | Ms Lisa Calderwood () |
While many large-scale surveys successfully collect a variety of different types of data from children and young people there is relatively little methodological evidence in this area. Much of the literature relating to children and young people's participation in research is taken from small-scale qualitative studies and tends to focus on ethical issues relating to the rights of children and young people. This session will cover experiences of including children and young people in surveys and survey design issues as they relate to children and young people. In particular, submissions are welcomed on:
- designing questionnaires for children and young people, including question testing methods and assessing the reliability and validity of children's self-reports
- collecting sensitive data from children and young people, including methods for ensuring privacy and encouraging accurate reporting
- inclusivity in data collection methods, including facilitating the participation of children with lower literacy levels
- ethical issues in involving children and young people in surveys, including gaining informed consent and protecting children's rights and well-being
- preventing non-response by engaging children and young people in research, including designing survey materials to appeal to children and using new technology and digital media for participant engagement
- collecting different types of data from children and young people, including physical measurements, cognitive assessments, biological samples and time use data
- using different methods of data collection and innovative technology for data collection, including the web and mobile phones
GUS launched in 2005 when children in birth cohort 1 were 10 months old. The first survey data collection with cohort children, using an Audio-CASI (Computer Assisted Self Interviewing) questionnaire, was undertaken at sweep 7, when they were aged just under 8 years old.
As a longitudinal study, which seeks to continue following these children into - and beyond - adolescence, we wanted this first survey experience to be positive. This was important in terms of encouraging participation, collecting robust data and for the future success of GUS.
This paper will provide an account of the methods applied to ensure that the approach and instrument developed maximised children's participation and wider engagement with the study.
Our strategy sought to engage children at all stages of the survey process including through:
• bespoke survey documentation for the child, interviewer training and seeking informed consent from both the parent and child;
• questionnaire mode, which encompassed 'digital' data collection via a laptop and accessible and anonymous questionnaire completion via Audio-CASI;
• questionnaire content and layout that was tested to ensure that it was appropriate, relevant, user-friendly and appealing to children of this age;
• survey follow-up and feedback including the development of a certificate of thanks for participating, a dedicated area of the survey website for cohort children and a newsletter.
Information and reflection on the design and testing of materials, modes, questions and survey administration will be shared.
Growing Up in Ireland is Ireland's national longitudinal study of children. It has two cohorts of children and their families - a cohort of 11,000 infants who were recruited when they were 9 months of age and a cohort of 8,500 older children who were recruited at 9 years of age. The families and children in the younger cohort were interviewed at 9 months and 3 years. They will be re-interviewed at 5 years of age from March-September 2013. The older cohort was interviewed at 9 years and 13 years.
This paper focuses on the methods used for administering cognitive tests at 3 and 5 years of age to the children in the younger cohort and to questionnaires which were completed with the older group of children at 9 and 13 years of age. Some of these were administered by interviewers, some (especially those on more sensitive topics) were self-completed. At 13 years of age this involved using two laptops in the home to administer a series of inter-linked questionnaires to the children and their caregivers in both CAPI and CASI modes, as well as reasoning tests to the children. Using two laptops to simultaneously administer the questionnaires to children and their parents/guardians considerably reduced total contact time with families.
Development of the questionnaires, their outline content, aspects of their administration, along with issues associated with securing infomred assent and consent are considered.
The PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS) began in 1997 among a nationally-representative sample of 0-12 year old children in sample households, with up to two children selected in each family. Two follow-up waves were fielded in 2002-03 and 2007-08. The fieldwork results for CDS were very successful, and CDS data have supported a wide range of substantive and methodological analyses. PSID is currently planning a new Child Development Study to be fielded in 2014, with a revised data collection model that will institutionalize the collection information on all children under 18 years of age in sample families. The new PSID-CDS is planned to recur every five years, with data to be collected at each wave on all previously-interviewed and newly-eligible children in sample families. The primary mode of data collection will switch to telephone, although mailout-mailback protocols will be used to collect biomeasures and web-based protocols will also be considered. The new CDS will continue the collection of time diaries, one of the major innovations of the original CDS. In this paper, we will provide an overview of the methodological challenges of the original CDS, the main fieldwork results, and findings from analyses of non-response, attrition, and sample selection. We will also describe how these previous findings have influenced the plans and design for the new CDS, and will outline new challenges that we will face related to the collection of sensitive data, use of mixed-modes, and possibilities for collecting cognitive assessments and additional biomeasures.
The use of audio enhancements on self-completion questionnaires has become reasonably established as a means of helping respondents with lower levels of literacy participate in, and understand, self-completion surveys. One potentially useful application of audio support is in surveys of children, because children’s surveys typically need to cater for respondents across a wider spectrum of literacy abilities than general population studies.
Despite fairly regular use of audio enhancements on surveys, however, limited evidence exists regarding who this approach is useful for and how it can be targeted and administered most effectively. Furthermore, a significant amount of the existing evidence focuses on Audio-CASI (Computer-Assisted Self Interviewing), yet a substantial proportion of studies with children are conducted on paper.
This paper presents results from the use of an audio-supported paper self-completion questionnaire that was developed for the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) Age 11 Survey. The MCS approach used longitudinal data on children’s educational profile to target the audio support. This paper presents findings from the use of audio support in the MCS Age 11 survey, and the development and piloting work that underpinned the approach used. The development work helps to give an understanding of how audio enhancements can be implemented for use with paper self-completion questionnaires, and the findings help to determine whether this approach is useful for wider application on pen and paper surveys.