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You're listening to IOE Insights, the UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London. This is Research for the Real World. Conversations about education and social science research and its impact on policy practice and our everyday lives. This is Research for the Real World. Hello, I'm Mark Quinn and I'm the deputy program director for the Early Career teacher programmes in the Centre for Educational Leadership at the IOE. In this season of Research for the Real World, we're highlighting the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, or CLS for short, and its role in developing powerful resources and evidence for research and policy development, and to inform and shape the world we live in today. Today, I'm delighted to have Professor Alissa Goodman. Alissa is a professor of economics at the UCL Social Research Institute and was previously director of CLS. Alissa was also awarded a CBE for her services to social sciences in 2021. Congratulations, Alissa, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. That's a real pleasure for us to have you, Alissa. It might be a good place to start for you, just to tell us something about your journey so far through your career and how you got interested in this particular area of research. I first started my career as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and I was working on income inequality in the UK, and I became very interested in why inequality had risen so much in our country, particularly over the nineteen eighties, but how we'd gone from a very low inequality society relatively to a very high one in just a decade, was the kind of starting point for my career. But I very quickly became interested in what drives it and causes inequality in societies, including in the UK. And thinking about how family backgrounds, shapes developments, and how the circumstances that we grow up in help shape your life chances and your outcomes, both economic outcomes and other things later in life. So I started with the lens looking at inequality from a kind of cross-sectional income perspective, and then broadened it really to looking at the life course. And I became very interested in how cohort studies like the ones that were already running at CLS could help us understand the long term roots of inequality. And you are here particularly to talk to us about a new birth cohort study. The Generation New Era study, which I understand is the first that we've had in the UK for twenty five years. So can you tell us something about that study, where it came from and what the aims of that study are? So the new study is called Generation New Era, and it's aiming to recruit thirty thousand babies and families of thirty thousand babies from around the UK. They're being born in twenty twenty six and we're aiming to recruit them, study their health, their developments, the circumstances that they're growing up in and to follow them periodically across their childhood and as they grow up across the whole of their lives. And we hope that this will give really important evidence for policy and for science around what shapes the lives of children today and what policies can be developed to help support that. And what makes this study different from previous cohort studies that have run? So one of the major reasons why it's different is because it's very big. So we'll be aiming to recruit thirty thousand families and babies that are born in twenty twenty six, and that's considerably bigger than the predecessors. It's also new in terms of its content and topic areas. So things that we didn't have to think about, including when, for example, the Millennium Cohort Study were young around the digital environment and the screen use of parents and the screen use of infants. And how that evolves makes it new. And there's also new forms of data collection. So we'll be using a study app to have monthly data collections. Among the families that are involved will be collecting genetic data. And also we're building in administrative data linkages from the start. So there's it's a bigger study, new topics for investigation and also new types of data collection from the assets. Yeah. So would you like to say a little bit more about those data collection methods? Because this seems to be quite an exciting new era really for the essential, I suppose. Alyssa, you're obviously using new tools and thinking about different ways of of connecting data. Do you want to say a little bit more about that or any specific data collection method? That would be interesting. So one of the novelties of Generation New Era will be the Baby Steps app. So we will be placing with families at the first interview an app that will both allow them to record key milestones and things about their, their babies for themselves, but also to contribute to surveys and other forms of data collection as they go along in the study. So previous studies have tended to have periodic data collections, for example, at birth and then again at age three or age five. Whereas we will be aiming to have a more frequent and continuous type of data collection in between these major study sweeps. Presumably that means there'll be all sorts of new types of reporting that you'll be able to make from the study. So one of the things we'll be asking parents to do is record a video of themselves interacting with their children, for example, and some of that will allow researchers to record kind of key features around how the baby and the parents interact. And it also serves as a data bank for the future, in the sense that videos contain a rich source of data that could be coded in lots of different ways. And the technology around how we might be able to do that is likely to change in the future. So it's kind of data resource for now and for the way we can investigate it is almost certainly going to change in the future. We bank what we get now, and then it will be used for many decades to come. Yeah. Okay. So we've got some strong sense now of the different and sort of groundbreaking data collection methods that you're that you're using with the Generation New ERA study. You've said a little bit about how your families are how many more families you have compared to previous cohorts. And about the need for them to be truly representative of families across the UK. So can you just tell us a little bit about how you're going to recruit these families? Where are they going to come from? How are they going to how are you going to sign them up? Reaching from administrative data that's held across the UK in different jurisdictions. Essentially, it's marrying up of birth registration and NHS birth notification records. So we've gone through a very well governance process to essentially access records of babies that are being have been born. And we will be sending letters to the families who've been chosen. Telling them about the study and allowing them to opt out. If they don't decide to opt out. Then they'll be receiving letters and then visits by interviewers to sign them up to take part in this study. So the sample was essentially a representative one as we mentioned, but there are particular sample boosts to make sure that we get large enough numbers of particular groups of interests and to allow well-powered statistical analysis of particular parts of the population. So we have big population boosts in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, so that these could become a really valuable data resources for policy making in each of the devolved countries, as well as for the UK as a whole. And we also are building in ethnic minority sample boosts and low income area boosts to make sure that we can maximise the value and potential of the study for doing research that informs on the experiences of ethnic minorities and those in low income areas as well. Yeah, and these are those sample boosts in those areas and within those demographics is that because you have particular hypotheses about. For example, babies in Northern Ireland or babies from low income families is there. Are there particular questions that you're keen to get at with those sample boosts? So I think with the with the country boosts, what we really want to do is make sure that researchers have well-powered analysis that can be carried out on data within one country, which will make sure that we can inform policies that are being developed within the devolved countries. So there's lots of questions about sort of infant developments and their health and well-being that aren't like play specific, but actually a lot of policies in early years and in education and in health are now devolved. So a big enough sample size to understand the impacts of policies and to understand characteristics of the populations in each country will be really important for informing policy and then with other groups where we're boosting them. Part of the reason for the boosts is just to make sure that we maintain a big enough sample as we go through, because some populations are either harder to recruit in the first place or may tend to drop out. So some of it is a kind of insurance policy to make sure that our samples stay large enough. But also we are interested in sort of low income, and poverty is one of the major kind of challenges for families raising children. What are the sort of what are the opportunities and one of the risks that's faced sort of families and children in low income areas in particular, is an important area of research and policy that we need to support. You mentioned challenges with recruiting families from particular parts of the country or from particular income groups, for example, or from different ethnicities. And you've mentioned about sort of attrition, you know, drop out rates. Yeah. And is that something which is which which you found from work on other cohort studies. And have you got sort of mitigations apart from apart from oversampling. The other other mitigations for that. So the way that we engage with our participants is incredibly important both for recruitment and for retention. So will be really important for us to stay in touch with study members. Keep track of them when they move. Most people do take part in our studies tell us that the very strongest motivator is. They believe it will have benefits beyond themselves and into wider society. So letting them know the findings of the study and what benefits it's had is a really important part of the recruitment and retention strategy. It's true to say that response rates to surveys in general across society have become lower over the years. So working very hard on maximising response and maximising retention is one of the core aims of the study. I'm interested in that. That's fascinating actually. You were saying that your subjects are motivated to stay because they see that there are benefits in the research, which is great. Actually, that's good to know. Of course. But how do you report findings to the families? Obviously, there's reports you put out in the in the public domain, but are there particular ways that you report back to the families as you go through the study? Yes. We have various keeping in touch mailings. There's a participant website, there's a Generation New Era Instagram account. So we with the cohorts where they send birthday cards when they are, you know, when they're when they have birthdays. So we have various ways of keeping in touch and we try and keep in touch in ways that will be easily accessible and help you to understand the things that they're doing. Another part of the recruitment and retention strategies around incentives. So we do pay incentives in the form of vouchers or do varies. And that's an important part of what motivates taking part as well. Yeah, I think people will want to sign up if they happen to be having a baby at some point this year. Um, can you share with us any questions that you might be asking? Questions within this, asking parents within this study. So any particular interesting areas that you've got questions ready to ready to ask with this finalizing the questionnaire for wave one. Now that's going to be when the babies are nine to ten months old, and that's when the first interviews will go out into the field. And we'll be interviewing parents, both mothers and fathers, wherever we can recruit them. So whether they live with the baby or also typically fathers who don't from the outset, they're getting the same it's the same household as the baby. So we're looking to recruit parents. And then we're asking a range of questions both about the household and the parents. And particularly also behaving as you would imagine. So for me, there's lots of questions about their health and their development and things like their language recognition when they've reached certain developmental milestones and sort of sleeping and eating and things that parents are concerned with in the baby's first year of life. For the parents, we'll be wanting to know about their work and their education, but also things like their mental health, how they're finding it with their baby, their social support, and a range of other things that we know that affect parents and parenting and the development of children. Mhm. You said a little bit about this towards the beginning, Alissa, about what, you know, what makes this study different from previous cohort studies. And I think you began to say something about what the you know, what makes this generation of children perhaps different from previous generations? What more can you say to us about that? What's special about, you know, babies born in twenty twenty six that makes them different from previous generations? So I think we all recognize that babies are being born now into a world that's very rapidly changing in terms of the social, political and economic environments. We, for example, the families have come through the cost of living crisis and rapid inflation. So there's major issues around economic security and financial security. I mentioned the digital environment and the world. Children are growing up and will be interacting with new technologies. The parents themselves also. And there's also huge issues as these children grow around things like climate change and so on, that it would be very important for this, this new generation to be recorded and the stress, stresses and pressures on them to be captured for research. I'm curious about this. How given that, you know, you can't possibly know your team, I guess, can't possibly know all of the challenges or areas which might be facing this generation before you start. You don't own, you don't know everything in twenty twenty six that you might want to ask about in twenty thirty six, I suppose so. So, you know, can you tell us something about how your the questions you ask sort of evolve or change over the period of the whole study? Each time we do a major data collection, we do a very extensive community consultation. So we need to find out what the major issues are for policy and for research. And then we try to build in a core set of questions that will remain constant or fairly constant longitudinally to build a new contents, both reflecting the things that need to be collected as the babies grow to toddlers and then to children, and so on. The type of content has to change as the children grow, but also new new question areas and content come on board because of the world changing as well. So we are constantly evolving the study, as well as trying to keep as much longitudinal measurements as we can. And how does it overlap with, or dare I say, even interfere with the other ongoing cohort studies that you're working on? Because I presume they also involve, you know, the Millennium Cohort Study, for example, will presumably continue to evolve, but you continue to ask different questions, but overlapping questions, I presume, between the two cohorts that would have I guess that right? Yes. So we've tried to build in quite a bit of harmonization with the Millennium Cohort study, when the mix babies were the same age as Generation New Era in the mix. Babies were nine months. And now with the new generation, new era babies where we can. We tried to harmonize so that we can make direct comparisons, but also with each of the studies, we try and harmonize the way we collect certain measures so that there aren't measurement differences that occur only because of like individual choices the different study teams have made. So there are certain areas where there's quite standard questions, like on camera environments and other areas where we'll get together on the scene by scene basis and decide what the preferred question approach would be, so that we are as harmonized as we can be, as each of the studies develops over time. So the each sort of mutually reinforcing process, I guess. Yeah. So we have we have a set of theme leads who work in, in CLS, who advise each of the study directors on measures. And then our survey team who designs our questions, also keeps question bank so that we can communicate with each other and keep each other about question development. And I presume that also there's a similar sort of interaction with government departments. Both sort of UK national nationally and across the different devolved regions. We have been able to have quite a bit of advice from government departments and devolved countries as we develop the Generation New Era questionnaire. So we have a governmental steering group, and we've had really good representation at each of our consultation events from people, both from UK government departments and from the devolved countries. So we also have commissioned a special engagement that the National Children's Bureau carried out for us, which was really successful at recruiting people working in early years across councils across the UK, where a lot of early years courses happen. So you mentioned before about how the cohort study informs policy both UK wide and across the devolved countries of the UK. So I suppose that involves you interacting really quite a lot with the government departments, and one would assume a lot of that would be around early years policy, education policy and health policy. So if you could say something more about that or about different policy areas that that you that you already know that your study is going to be interacting with. We have had a lot of engagement with policy makers as we've been developing the new study and deciding what to include in the questionnaire. We have the benefit of a governmental steering group, and we also set up special engagement exercise that was run by the National Children's Bureau. For us, that was very successful at engaging a lot of people working in early years policy from across local government and across the UK, and lots of people from the third sector and from government also came to our consultation events. So we had lots of chances to hear about what both the kind of big high level policy issues are, as well as more specific areas of policy interest. So like you said, some of the big areas include around ensuring a good level of children's development. So one of the key focuses of the UK government's opportunity mission is around ensuring a good level of development by the time children start school. And there's also areas of policy focus on child poverty. So a new child poverty strategy that was announced last year that looks both at the material environment of children in terms of income poverty, but also deprivation and lots of policy initiatives, both at the UK and national levels on health inequalities, and the idea that the sort of health of infants and early years health is particularly important. Starting points for health across life. There's also lots of specific kind of policy domains that our study can speak to. So lots in the news at the moment, just for example, around vaccination uptake. And we're seeing various measles outbreaks reported in the news due to low vaccination rates. So we'll be covering topics like vaccination. Also other things around childcare and childcare costs and employment and a whole range of other things like that as well, that have focused on the early years. So I immediately started thinking about politics in this, Alissa, because, you know, you particularly mentioned the opportunity mission, the current government, and you talked about their child poverty strategy, but obviously you're working on a study which is going to last more than a generation. It's a lifetime study, and governments come and go, right. So how do you manage the or how are you responsive to, if you like, changing government agendas? So I think often the policy issues that impact children are fairly similar, even though the specifics of the policies change. So we try to collect information that will have a long term sort of salience and significance and also some longitudinal aspect to it as. So we wouldn't collect very detailed data on specific policies. Uptake, for example, because that wouldn't necessarily be able to have a longitudinal kind of dimension. So we try and get a balance between being as informative as we can around current policy and policy priorities, but also maintaining an eye on what has long term value. Yeah, I'm reminded by of something you said right at the very beginning of this discussion, Alissa, about your own motivations about, you know, what drew you initially into this whole area and you talked about, I think you were talking about social justice. And I maybe I'll just invite you to say something more about that, about how you are motivated to be doing this kind of really important work. I guess I'm extremely motivated by the fact that the data that we're going to collect will be a resource for scientists from around the world, not just any particular study team. So I think it's the fact that we're creating a data resource that will inform on children's lives and make children's lives better, and is available for researchers around the world to answer questions, both ones that we know now and ones that we haven't yet foreseen is incredibly important to me. I think my career started looking at inequalities, and I think those big picture questions are all the more important now with the some of the major uncertainties that I think our children are going to be growing up with. And I feel really strongly that the data that we will create will provide a really important evidence base to support the sort of good, strong policy and good science in the future. Alissa, that is amazing. Thank you so much. What a great way to finish off our conversation. It's important, isn't it? It's hard to imagine actually more important research, um, that, that, you know, can, can take place to be involved in such a massive cohort study, as you say, thirty thousand babies and families across the whole of the UK, being really careful about listening to all the voices that are there in the country and having such a future focus completely meaningful to policy as it evolves. You know, in the country, it's and it's wonderful that you're able to sort of connect your own values to your work. Alissa. So it's a privilege, so thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. You've just been hearing from Professor Alissa Goodman. Some of what we've covered today is also available in the episode notes. If you've enjoyed this episode, we have an archive of twenty five past seasons. Please just search IOE Insights to find episodes of Research for the Real World, as well as more podcasts from the IOE. And a quick favour before you go. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, we'd really appreciate it if you could give the IOE Insights podcast a rating. Five stars would be nice if you're enjoying the show, and that will help us to reach more people who are interested in hearing about such important work. And that includes the other podcast that I present with my wonderful colleague, Elaine Long. It's called The Staffroom, and we speak to educational professionals at all levels, from early career teachers to academics and executive leaders. So please have a listen to The Staffroom podcast, also to be found on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mark Quinn, thanks for listening. Research for the Real World is brought to you by IOE Research Development and IOE Marketing and Communications at University College London. The series producer is Amie Liebowitz, the executive producer of the IOE Insights podcast is Jason Ilagan. Thanks for listening. Search IOE Insights for more podcasts from the IOE.