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, and to improve our understanding of:the relationships between learning outcomes, and children's home backgrounds, gender, work, schools, teachers and class and school peer-groupsschool effectiveness, by analysing factors explaining the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in school, including value-added analysis of schooling and comparative analysis of school-systemsequity issues (including gender) in relation to learning outcomes and the evolution of inequalities within educationThe 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. It 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 Young Lives. A further round of school surveys took place during the 2016-2017 school year. The key focus areas for these were:benchmarking levels of student attainment and progress in key learning domainseffects of school and teacher quality, and school effectivenesseducational transitions at age 15The 2016-2017 school surveys focused on the level of schooling accessed by 15-year-olds in each country, so including Grade 7 and 8 students in Ethiopia (upper primary level), Grade 9 students in India (lower secondary level), and Grade 10 students in Vietnam (upper secondary level). The School Survey data are held separately for each country. The Ethiopia data are available from the UK Data Archive under SN 7823 and SN 8359, the Vietnam data are available from SN 7663 and SN 8360, and the Peru data have been archived under SN 7479 (no 2016-2017 survey). Further information is available from the Young Lives School Survey webpages.
Main Topics:
The India survey included data collection at the school, class and pupil level, and involved the Director / Head teacher, the Maths and English teachers, and the Young Lives child. The instruments included in the survey were:Principal questionnaire - collected background data on the principal and the school (including school management practices)Teacher questionnaire - collected background data on Class 9 Maths and English teachers (including teacher motivation and class-level information)Student questionnaire - collected background data on Grade 10 students (including academic support within and beyond school, and psychosocial measures)School facilities observation - collected data on school infrastructureTeacher professional knowledge questionnaire - collected Mathematics teacher performance on an assessment of specialised content knowledge for teachingMaths test - repeated measures, administered at the beginning and end of Class 9. Assessing students’ curriculum knowledge, and ability to apply curriculum knowledge in less familiar contextsFunctional English test - repeated measures, administered at the beginning and end of Class 9. Assessing students' English reading skills relevant to the contexts in which they use (or will use) the languageTransferable Skills test - cross-sectional measure, administered at the end of Class 9. Assessing problem-solving and critical thinking skills
Simple random sample
See documentation for details
Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
Educational measurements
Observation
