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.
In 2015, all 16-year-olds who celebrated their 16th birthday in February and March of the survey year were invited to take part.
Main Topics:
In 2015, the following topics were included in the survey: background; community relations (funded by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minster (OFMDFM)); shared education (funded by the Department of Education (DE)); sport and physical activity (funded by Sport NI); child sexual exploitation (funded by Barnardo's Northern Ireland); young carers (funded by the ARK Ageing project). The questions on sport and physical activity were also included in the Kids' Life and Times Survey, 2015, as were questions on shared education and young carers. The YLT survey also contained questions on language learning and internationalisation which were part of a larger mixed methods project funded by the British Council.
Simple random sample
Postal survey
Online survey; (respondents could choose one method)
