Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Young Life and Times Survey (YLT) originally began as a companion survey to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (NILT) series. It surveyed young people aged 12-17 living in the households of adults interviewed for NILT, and YLT ran alongside it from 1998-2000. Following an evaluation in 2001, the YLT series recommenced in 2003 (see SN 4826) using a completely different methodology and independent of the adult NILT. This new YLT survey uses Child Benefit records as a sampling frame.The aims of the YLT series are to: monitor public attitudes towards social policy and political issues in Northern Ireland; provide a time series on attitudes to key social policy areas; facilitate academic social policy analysis; provide a freely available resource on public attitudes for the wider community of users in Northern Ireland; give a voice to young people. An open access time-series teaching dataset has been created from the 2003-2012 YLTs - see SN 7548.The Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) survey of P7 children (10-11 year olds) is also part of the same suite of surveys as YLT and NILT.Further information about the YLT, including publications, may be found on the Access Research Knowledge (ARK) YLT webpages.

After evaluation, the YLT survey was conducted in 2003 with a much-changed methodology. Instead of surveying those aged 12 to 17 in the households of NILT respondents, it now aimed to contact all 16-year-olds who celebrated their 16th birthday in February of the survey year. All too often the opinions of young people are ignored when decisions are made about many of the issues involving them. Thus, the revised aim of the YLT was now to record the views of 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland, with a focus on community relations issues such as politics, sectarianism and education. By inviting respondents to suggest topics for the next year's survey, it aims to ensure that the topics covered are relevant to the lives of 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland.

Main Topics:

The dataset contains the responses of 902 respondents to the 2003 YLT survey. Questions can be categorised into the following topics: community relations; identity; cross community contact; social capital; education; background details on the respondents.

No sampling (total universe)

Telephone interview

Postal survey

Online self-completion