ESRA 2025 Preliminary Program

Monday 14 July    Tuesday 15 July    Wednesday 16 July    Thursday 17 July    Friday 18 July   

All time references are in CEST

Children and Youth cohort studies: developments and innovations 3
Session Organisers	Professor Lisa Calderwood (UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies) Dr Larissa Pople (UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies)
Time	Wednesday 16 July, 09:00 - 10:30
Room	Ruppert 040

Longitudinal cohort studies of children and youth are a core part of the survey infrastructure in many countries, and in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a renewed focus on such studies as vital evidence bases for child and adolescent research including on well-being, education and labour market. However, the broader context of such studies is increasing challenges with ensuring population representativeness, participant engagement and inclusivity, and the need for sufficient analytical power for research about hard-to-reach groups to inform vital policy questions.
This session will cover recent developments and innovations in child and youth cohort studies. This includes study design approaches for newly established child and youth cohorts, as well as developments in existing cohort studies who survey children and young people.
The session aims to showcase recent developments in the research landscape around child and youth cohorts, and to explore survey methodological issues around surveying children and young people.
Submissions are particularly welcomed on:
- design and implementation of new child and youth cohort studies
- developments in existing child and youth cohort studies
- giving children and young people a voice in study design, and participant co-production
- measurement in child and youth cohorts, including questionnaires and direct assessments
- collecting data on sensitive topics from children and young people
- data collection innovations and mode
- inclusivity in child and youth cohort studies
- assessing the reliability and validity of children and young people’s self-reports
- preventing non-response and innovative approaches to participant engagement
- the challenges of retaining young people’s contact and interest in surveys over time
- ethical issues in involving children and young people in surveys, including informed consent and young people’s rights.
- addressing international comparisons and data harmonisation
Submissions need not be restricted to these specific examples.

Keywords: children, youth, cohort studies

Papers

Ensuring International Comparability: Best Practices in Data Harmonization for Child Well-being Research

Dr Sabine Düval (Deutsches Jugendinstitut München) - Presenting Author
Professor Susanne Kuger (Deutsches Jugendinstitut München)

Ensuring international comparability is crucial for (longitudinal) research on child well-being across diverse cultural and national contexts. This study provides a practical guide to strategies like data harmonization aimed at improving the reliability and validity of cross-national studies. Key challenges are identified, including cultural differences in the understanding of child well-being, variations in data collection instruments, and discrepancies in sampling frameworks. Institutional and regulatory differences that affect data comparability in longitudinal studies are also addressed.

To overcome these challenges, the chapter emphasizes the importance of standardized survey instruments and rigorous translation protocols. These efforts ensure consistency while accounting for cultural and contextual differences. Harmonizing sampling frameworks and developing protocols to address discrepancies are highlighted as critical steps for achieving robust international comparability.

In a case study, we use existing data from the international TIMSS study, specifically drawing on items that measure child well-being. The items focus on well-being at school (e.g., "I like being in school" and "I feel safe when I am at school") and bullying (e.g., "Made fun of me or called me names" and "Left me out of their games or activities"). We perform both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA/CFA) across Ireland, Germany, France, Norway, and Slovenia to assess whether these items consistently capture child well-being across these countries.

Our findings provide critical insights into the cross-national validity of these well-being measures and highlight the challenges of ensuring measurement equivalence while balancing cultural specificity. By tackling these methodological and theoretical challenges, this study offers practical insights into designing and implementing cross-national child cohort studies. It underscores the importance of addressing comparability issues to strengthen future research on child well-being in diverse cultural and national contexts.

Growing Up in Ireland: Developing and maintaining a quality longitudinal survey

Dr Katie O Farrell (Central Statistics Office) - Presenting Author

Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is the national, longitudinal study of children and young people in Ireland. This landmark survey is a principal data source for issues facing children and young people in Ireland today. The survey covers a broad range of themes and is composed of three cohorts: Cohort ’98 who joined the study aged nine and were 25 at the last wave of data collection; Cohort ’08 who joined the study at nine months and will be 17/18 at their next wave of data collection; and Cohort ’24, the new cohort of nine-month-old infants for whom Wave One data collection is currently ongoing.
With these cohorts spanning multiple life stages including the transition into adulthood, GUI faces challenges on multiple fronts. This paper will discuss these challenges and the innovative developments GUI are considering to meet them, which include, but are not limited to, delivering a relevant and well-designed instrument that balances timely delivery to meet stakeholder needs against respondent burden, achieving and maintaining population representativeness, and understanding and motivating respondent engagement.

Findings from a feasibility study of a new UK Birth Cohort Study: The Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study (ELC-FS)

Professor Lisa Calderwood (University College London) - Presenting Author
Professor Alissa Goodman (University College London)
Professor Pasco Fearon (University College London and University of Cambridge)
Ms Karen Dennison (University College London)
Dr Erica Wong (University College London)
Dr Alyce Raybould (University College London)
Ms Julia Pye (Ipsos)
Ms Sam Clemens (Ipsos)

Longitudinal birth cohort studies are vital for understanding the development and outcomes of successive generations of children, though there is increasing recognition that often those families who are of most interest from a research and policy perspective are less likely to be recruited and retained in national studies. The UK Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study (ELC-FS), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, tested the feasibility of a new UK-wide birth cohort study of several thousand babies with a target age of 9 months. It is led by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London. The fieldwork, carried out by Ipsos, started in September 2023 in England, Wales and Scotland, and April 2024 in Northern Ireland. Fieldwork ended in summer 2024.

The study has strong focus on inclusivity and is designed to maximise representation of ‘less often heard’ groups. It includes sample boosts of babies from disadvantaged and ethnic minority families, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and direct recruitment of fathers including those living in their own households. This was possible through the use of birth registrations as a sampling frame.

The study involved interviews with mothers and fathers about children’s social and economic environments, their health, well-being and development. We also collected saliva and oral fluid swabs for DNA extraction with a randomised subgroup, and record linkage consents where we experimentally tested different consent wording. Interviews were carried out primarily face-to-face, with web, phone and video interviewing also used. We also included experiments to test the effectiveness of targeted differential incentives and conditional incentives.
 
This paper will give an overview of the design and implementation of the ELC-FS. We will present findings relating to response rates, data quality, and the experimental components of the feasibility study.

Growing Up In Digital Europe pilot fieldwork and infrastructure development

Professor Gary Pollock (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Professor Toni Babarovic (Ivo Pilar Institute) - Presenting Author
Dr Ognjen Obucina (INED)

Growing Up In Digital Europe (GUIDE), an input harmonised cross-national longitudinal study of child wellbeing, completed a successful pilot survey in five countries in 2023-4. Using EU funding from project COORDINATE and national funding from Slovenia, fieldwork instruments were developed, translated from English to national languages, and data was collected in Croatia, Finland, France, Ireland and Slovenia. Most of the full wave research design for GUIDE was included in the pilot survey including finalising questionnaire content, the translation protocol, CAPI and CAVI development and interviewer training. In this paper we begin by presenting the GUIDE approach to piloting, which was developed in a previous project, and reflect on how it could be adapted for the future. We then describe the experiences of the pilot survey in the five countries and show how it has helped to highlight specific issues that need to be addressed for full wave data collection. We then discuss the fieldwork, the sampling strategies and modes of data collection used and reflect upon how these may change in the future. Aspects of the data collected in the pilots are presented in terms of further adaptations that are likely to be required, for example through testing the robustness of the measures and the validity of the responses, as well as how we can develop better approaches to respondent engagement. The experiences of the pilots have provided valuable insights which will help in the planning for full wave data collection in the future.

Designing Surveys for Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Practices and Recommendations

Ms Kari-Anne Lund (Statistics Norway) - Presenting Author
Professor Elisabeth Gulløy (University of South-Eastern Norway)
Professor Shahram Moradi (University of South-Eastern Norway)

Children and adolescents are increasingly being invited to participate in large-scale, nationally representative surveys. However, collecting reliable and valid data from young respondents presents additional challenges of many kinds, compared to data collection in adult populations. Survey designers face methodological, cognitive, ethical and practical challenges that need special attention when respondents are of young age. Factors such as varying levels of language comprehension, shorter attention spans, differences in emotional and social development, and varying literacy levels can significantly impact children’s ability to understand and respond to survey questions. To address methodological challenges, recommendations have been proposed on how to conduct surveys with children and adolescents since early 2000’s. However, systematic practices in survey planning and questionnaire development to adapt to child populations only recently became customary in statistical agencies and research institutions.

Recommendations and best practice reports include questionnaire design and user testing procedures. However, the extent to which they are implemented—and in which subject areas—when surveying children and adolescents remains unclear.

Given this gap, we have conducted a systematic review of existing research to guide future efforts in questionnaire design for young respondents. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the current methodological recommendations for questionnaire design and user testing targeted at children and adolescents.

In this study, we first present methodological considerations related to collecting survey data from children and practical procedures of the systematic review. Second, we present key observations from the systematic review of empirical literature to identify how prior research has attempted to adjust survey tools to align with the considerations mentioned above. Finally, we wrap up with a discussion that aims to aid future research and help practitioners in design surveys tailored for children and adolescents.

The COORDINATE Foresight Exercise: Addressing Ethical Dilemmas in Children and Youth Cohort Studies

Dr Klea Ramaj (Policy Evaluation and Research Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University) - Presenting Author

The purpose of this paper will be to present findings from the COORDINATE Foresight Exercise, which was carried out in 2023-2024. The main aim of this Foresight Exercise was to identify and prioritise future opportunities and challenges related to ethical considerations for developing the Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE) survey and research infrastructure. Signal spotters were recruited through a horizon scanning process from nine countries across Europe. Each signal spotter was asked to provide each country team with insights about ethical challenges that might affect a prospective comparative birth cohort study such as GUIDE. These insights were then analysed by each country team through foresight workshops. The aim of the foresight workshops was to identify themes and categorise them into opportunities and threats. Each team then produced a country report which was sent to the lead project team at Manchester Metropolitan University, who in turn collated and analysed the reports from all the nine countries. The findings from the COORDINATE Foresight Exercise were further discussed with GUIDE’s International Youth Advisory Board. The main future ethical issues that emerged from the COORDINATE Foresight Exercise revolved around migration, technology advancement, social changes (such as increasing inequalities, changes to regulations, and the evolving nature of identities), as well as matters related to data security. This paper will provide a detailed overview of the COORDINATE Foresight Exercise, including the process of data collection, data analysis, as well as the implications of the main findings.