Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Young Lives survey is an innovative long-term project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four developing countries. The study is being conducted in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam and has tracked the lives of 12,000 children over a 20-year period, through 5 (in-person) survey rounds (Round 1-5) and, with the latest survey round (Round 6) conducted over the phone in 2020 and 2021 as part of the Listening to Young Lives at Work: COVID-19 Phone Survey.Round 1 of Young Lives surveyed two groups of children in each country, at 1 year old and 5 years old. Round 2 returned to the same children who were then aged 5 and 12 years old. Round 3 surveyed the same children again at aged 7-8 years and 14-15 years, Round 4 surveyed them at 12 and 19 years old, and Round 5 surveyed them at 15 and 22 years old. Thus the younger children are being tracked from infancy to their mid-teens and the older children through into adulthood, when some will become parents themselves.The 2020 phone survey consists of three phone calls (Call 1 administered in June-July 2020; Call 2 in August-October 2020 and Call 3 in November-December 2020) and the 2021 phone survey consists of two additional phone calls (Call 4 in August 2021 and Call 5 in October-December 2021) The calls took place with each Young Lives respondent, across both the younger and older cohort, and in all four study countries (reaching an estimated total of around 11,000 young people).The Young Lives survey is carried out by teams of local researchers, supported by the Principal Investigator and Data Manager in each country.Further information about the survey, including publications, can be downloaded from the Young Lives website.
School Survey: A school survey was introduced into Young Lives in 2010, following the third round of the household survey, in order to capture detailed information about children’s experiences of schooling. It addressed two main research questions:how do the relationships between poverty and child development manifest themselves and impact upon children's educational experiences and outcomes?to what extent does children’s experience of school reinforce or compensate for disadvantage in terms of child development and poverty? The survey allows researchers to link longitudinal information on household and child characteristics from the household survey with data on the schools attended by the Young Lives children and children's achievements inside and outside the school. A wide range of stakeholders, including government representatives at national and sub-national levels, NGOs and donor organisations were involved in the design of the school survey, so the researchers could be sure that the ‘right questions’ were being asked to address major policy concerns. This consultation process means that policymakers already understand the context and potential of the Young Lives research and are interested to utilise the data and analysis to inform their policy decisions. The survey provides policy-relevant information on the relationship between child development (and its determinants) and children’s experience of school, including access, quality and progression. This combination of household, child and school-level data over time constitutes the comparative advantage of the Young Lives study. The School Survey data are held separately for each country. The India data are available from the UK Data Archive under SN 7478, the Peru data have been archived under SN 7479, and the Ethiopia data are available from SN 7823. A further round of school surveys took place during the 2016-2017 school year. The Ethiopia survey is available under SN 8358, the India survey under SN 8359 and the Vietnam survey under SN 8360. Further information is available from the Young Lives School Survey webpages.
Main Topics:
The survey included data collection at the school, class and pupil level, and involved the Principal, the teacher of Grade 5 class, and pupil. The instruments included in the survey are: Principal questionnaire. Administered individually by fieldworkers to principals.School site observation. Fieldworker completed through observation of school site during their time in the school.Teacher questionnaire. Administered individually by fieldworkers to teacher of YL child's class.Pupil questionnaire. Administered to the whole class. Fieldworker led and directed. Collected background data on the Pupil, as well as information on attitudes to school.Pupil assessments in Maths and Vietnamese. Administered to the whole class. Fieldworker led and directed.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
Educational measurements
Observation
