External Publications Using GUI Data
Authors | Year | Title | Link | Journal/Book ↑ | Abstract |
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Banks, J., Shevlin, M., McCoy, S. | 2012 | Disproportionality in special education: identifying children with emotional behavioural difficulties in Irish primary schools | Open | European Journal of Special Needs Education | |
Within categories of special educational needs, emotional and behavioural difficulties have received much attention in recent years, particularly in relation to their definition and identification by parents and teachers. This paper stems from previous research which highlights how children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those attending schools designated as socio-economically disadvantaged are significantly more likely than their peers to be identified as having a special educational need of a non-normative type such as emotional behavioural difficulty (EBD). Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland study, it examines whether the EBD identified by teachers or within certain schools is matched by the child’s own performance on an internationally validated emotional and mental health measure – the Piers–Harris. Findings show that overall self-reported social emotional well-being bears a strong relationship to the probability of being identified with an EBD. However, boys, children from economically inactive and one-parent households and children attending the most disadvantaged school contexts are more likely to be identified with having an EBD, even after taking into account their social background characteristics and their scoring on the Piers–Harris measure. These findings suggest that the subjective nature of EBD identification is resulting in a disproportionate number of these children being identified with EBD. The implications of this study are explored for existing disability/SEN classification systems, school-wide intervention models and the impact on individual students labelled as EBD. Overall, the findings pose searching questions about the validity of employing SEN classification systems in deciding eligibility and types of appropriate provision. | |||||
McCoy, S., Maitre, B., Watson, D., Banks, J. | 2016 | The role of parental expectations in understanding social and academic well-being among children with disabilities in Ireland | Open | European Journal of Special Needs Education | |
This paper draws on longitudinal data to examine the extent to which parents’ educational expectations shape academic development and changes in self-concept among young people with different types of disability. The analysis is based on the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study, which tracked 7423 children between the primary to secondary school years, 21% of whom were identified with one of four main disability types. Our conceptual framework assumes that parental expectations at age 9 will be influenced by both the child’s disability and child’s academic achievement at that stage, as well as being influenced by other factors such as parent’s own education, family economic vulnerability, family relationships and family structure. Therefore, we take these factors into account in tracing the consequences of parental expectations at age 9, on academic and social outcomes at age 13 after the transition to secondary education. Among young people with a disability, poorer self-concept at age 13 is partly explained by lower parental expectations, particularly for those with general learning and emotional/behavioural disabilities. Similarly, parental expectations are a significant influence on children’s academic outcomes and partly explain the effects of disability status on academic development. Parents’ beliefs about their children’s abilities have a strong influence on achievement and self-concept, raising important issues around the need to promote equality of opportunity, raising awareness of the educational opportunities available, promoting positive expectations and engagement with school and the importance of promoting a range of opportunities for achievement. Keywords | |||||
McCoy, S., Banks, J. | 2012 | Simply Academic? Why children with special educational needs don't like school. | Open | European Journal of Special Needs Education | |
International studies have raised concerns about the academic and social implications of inclusive policies on school engagement and successful learning and, in particular, on the ways in which friendships are formed between students with SEN and other students. This article stems from research findings which show that Irish children with special educational needs like school less than their peers without SEN in mainstream settings. Using data from a large scale longitudinal study of 8578 9-year-olds, this paper uses a child centred research approach to investigate why this is the case particularly when they are in receipt of supports. To do this, we focus on processes underlying their dislike of school such as their academic engagement and social/peer relations. We measure academic engagement by looking at their interest in the subjects mathematics and reading and the extent to which they complete their homework. We examine the social/peer relations of students with special educational needs by assessing the extent to which they report liking their teacher. Using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) Scale and the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale we also examine the nature of peer relations among children with special educational needs in mainstream settings. Both academic engagement and social engagement play a central role in understanding the broader school engagement of children with special educational needs. By simultaneously examining the role of academic and social relations in shaping the engagement of children with SEN, the analysis provides a unique opportunity to fundamentally assess the barriers to true inclusion for children with special needs. Keywords | |||||
McCoy, S., Shevlin, M., Rose, R. | 2019 | Secondary school transition for students with special educational needs in Ireland | Open | European Journal of Special Needs Education | |
The transition from primary to secondary school represents one of the key junctions in the educational career of young people. Research has shown that much of the challenge in this transition stems from changing social structures and encountering different learning environments. However, the transition experiences of students with special educational needs (SEN) have received relatively little attention. Drawing on large-scale longitudinal data from over 7000 young people, we examine the extent to which students with different SEN experience additional transition barriers to their peers. The findings show that young people with SEN are more likely to experience a negative transition to secondary school. Furthermore, the type of need matters and students with general learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities are three times more likely to experience poor transition compared to young people without SEN. Transition experiences also vary by gender and socio-economic status, with girls and lower socio-economic groups more at risk. This paper highlights the importance of supporting students through to their second year in secondary education, promoting positive teacher–student interactions and providing additional supports for those with lower achievement in primary school. For students with disabilities, the research highlights a need for more effective transition supports, particularly during the pre-transition period. Keywords | |||||
Sprong, S., Skopek, S. | 2022 | Academic achievement gaps by migration background at school starting age in Ireland | Open | European Societies | |
In today’s increasingly diverse societies, a key question is how to foster the structural integration of immigrants and their descendants. While research indicates that migrant educational underachievement is a serious issue, relatively little is known about achievement gaps at younger ages and in relatively new immigration countries. The current study sets out to estimate the size of disparities by migration background at age five (i.e. when they start school) and explores the causes of these gaps. It does so in a context that offers a compelling but under-researched case: the Republic of Ireland. It draws on the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data, a national longitudinal study of children in Ireland. The results suggest that some disparities by migration background already existed at the start of primary school, but also that gaps were limited to verbal skills and differed widely across groups. Moreover, social background only played a relatively minor role in explaining the differences, whereas the child’s first language was a powerful predictor of disadvantages by migration background in verbal skills. | |||||
Li, M., Chzhen, Y. | 2023 | Parental investment or parenting stress? Examining the links between poverty and child development in Ireland | Open | European Societies | |
This study investigates the relationship between multidimensional household poverty and cognitive and behavioural development during the formative years of childhood (from 9 months to 9 years), using nationally representative longitudinal data from Ireland for the cohort of children born in 2007-2008. The results indicate substantial inequalities in Irish children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes at age 9 by multidimensional poverty duration. Children with at least one spell in poverty (out of four interviews) have worse cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Dynamic structural equation models provide evidence in support of a hybrid family investment/family stress model. Although family investment processes account for some of the cumulative effects of childhood poverty on cognitive outcomes, family stress processes help explain the links between poverty and both cognitive and behaviour outcomes in early childhood. Overall, poverty is strongly related to child outcomes over time via the direct effects of current poverty on child outcomes and path dependency in both poverty and child outcomes over time. There are also indirect effects via the two child outcomes reinforcing each other as children grow older (with the effects of behaviour problems dominating those of cognitive ability), even as the parental investment and maternal stress pathways become less pronounced. Keywords | |||||
McMullin, P., McGinnity, F., Murray, A., Russell, H. | 2020 | What You Do Versus Who You Are: Home-Learning Activities, Social Origin and Cognitive Skills among Young Children in Ireland | Open | European Sociological Review | |
This article explores the role that home-learning activities (HLAs) play in the relationship between social origin and cognitive development using an Irish birth cohort study, Growing Up in Ireland. Numerous studies using different measures of the home-learning environment (HLE) have shown that it has considerable influence on young children’s cognitive development, and that the HLE is often linked to social origin. We find a social gradient in vocabulary even at age 3 years, with the largest gaps for mothers’ education. Family income, mothers’ education, and social class are also associated with vocabulary independently, though these associations are reduced by adding all three measures simultaneously. The extent of HLAs helps explain a very small part of the education differences and none of the income or social class differences in vocabulary. We find some evidence that HLAs may be more salient for children from families with low income and lower social class backgrounds in terms of supporting vocabulary development, thereby compensating somewhat for disadvantage. HLAs also appear to encourage vocabulary development between age 3 and 5, and play a role in reducing the gap in vocabulary between high- and low-income children. | |||||
Hannan, C., Halpin, B., Coleman, C. | 2013 | Growing up in a One-Parent Family | Open | Family Support Agency | |
The purpose of this report is to investigate the known correlation between non-traditional family structures and poor outcomes for children. Discussions of this topic often focus on the distinction between two-parent families and one-parent families but this distinction can be misleading. In the Irish case, the crucial distinction is between children raised by parents who are married and children raised by a lone-parent who has never been married. The focal point here is non-marriage. This is important since non-marriage appears to be highly selective because the least privileged groups in Irish society are more likely to have children outside of marriage and at a relatively early age. This argument suggests that selection bias accounts for much of the association between family structure and child outcome i.e. growing up in a non-traditional family has little ‘direct’ or ‘causal’ effect on a child’s outcome. A large body of literature exists which documents a correlation between non-traditional family structure and poorer child development but researchers disagree as to whether this association represents a true causal effect. The primary objective of the current study, therefore, is to test this selection argument and to examine the extent to which selection effects can account for differences in child wellbeing in various family types. | |||||
Darmody, M., Daly, T. | 2017 | Attitudes towards the Irish Language on the Island of Ireland | Open | Foras na Gaeilge | |
This report explores factors influencing attitudes to, and the use of, the Irish language on the island of Ireland. In so doing, the report draws, first and foremost, on 2013 Irish Language Survey. In order to explore changes in attitudes over time, the study also draws on earlier (2001) survey data. Further insights into overall trends will be provided by the analysis of Census data. Given that attitudes are often shaped by schooling, the study also draws on the Growing Up in Ireland study (9-year-cohort) as well as the Irish Post Primary Longitudinal Study (PPLS) which indicate student perspectives on Irish. | |||||
Crowe, M., O'Sullivan, M., McNulty, B.A. Cassetti, O., O'Sullivan, A. | 2018 | Data Mapping From Food Diaries to Augment the Amount and Frequency of Food Measured Using Short Food Questionnaires | Open | Frontiers in Nutrition | |
Collecting accurate and detailed dietary intake data is costly at a national level. Accordingly, limited dietary assessment tools such as Short Food Questionnaires (SFQs) are increasingly used in large surveys. This paper describes a novel method linking matched datasets to improve the quality of dietary data collected. Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is a nationally representative longitudinal study of infants in the Republic of Ireland which used a SFQ (with no portion sizes) to assess the intake of “healthy” and “unhealthy” food and drink by 3 years old preschool children. The National Preschool Nutrition Survey (NPNS) provides the most accurate estimates available for dietary intake of young children in Ireland using a detailed 4 days weighed food diary. A mapping algorithm was applied using food name, cooking method, and food description to fill all GUI food groups with information from the NPNS food datafile which included the target variables, frequency, and amount. The augmented data were analyzed to examine all food groups described in NPNS and GUI and what proportion of foods were covered, non-covered, or partially-covered by GUI food groups, as a percentage of the total number of consumptions. The term non-covered indicated a specific food consumption that could not be mapped using a GUI food group. “High sugar” food items that were non-covered included ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, fruit juice, sugars, syrups, preserves and sweeteners, and ice-cream. The average proportion of consumption frequency and amount of foods not covered by GUI was 44 and 34%, respectively. Through mapping food codes in this manner, it was possible, using density plots, to visualize the relative performance of the brief dietary instrument (SFQ) compared to the more detailed food diary (FD). The SFQ did not capture a substantial portion of habitual foods consumed by 3-year olds in Ireland. Researchers interested in focussing on specific foods, could use this approach to assess the proportion of foods covered, non-covered, or partially-covered by reference to the mapped food database. These results can be used to improve SFQs for future studies and improve the capacity to identify diet-disease relationships. | |||||
Twenge, J., Blake, A., Haidt, J., Campbell, W.K. | 2020 | Commentary: Screens, Teens, and Psychological Well-Being: Evidence From Three Time-Use-Diary Studies | Open | Frontiers in Psychology | |
Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth | 2022 | Statistical Spotlight #7 - Experiences and Perceptions of Discrimination in Ireland | Open | Government of Ireland | |
Murtagh, E.M., Dempster, M., Murphy, M.H. | 2016 | Determinants of uptake and maintenance of active commuting to school | Open | Health & Place | |
The objective was to identify determinants of uptake and maintenance of active school travel (AST) over 4 years in children aged 9 at baseline. Data from wave 1 (n=8502) and 2 (n=7479) of the Growing Up in Ireland study were analysed. At 9- and 13-years 25% and 20% engaged in AST. Children were more likely to maintain or take-up AST if they lived in an urban area. Change in distance to school influenced both maintenance and adoption of AST, with a negative impact seen for increased distance between 9 and 13 years and a positive impact seen for decreased distance. Some factors which predict uptake and maintenance of AST are modifiable and can inform intervention development. | |||||
Cullinan J., Gillespie P. | 2016 | Does Overweight and Obesity Impact on Self-Rated Health? Evidence Using Instrumental Variables ordered probit Models | Open | Health Economics | |
This paper, for the first time, presents estimates of the causal impact of overweight and obesity on self-rated health (SRH) using instrumental variables (IV) econometric methods. While a number of previous studies have sought to better understand the determinants of SRH, there is no consensus in relation to the impact of overweight and obesity. Using data from a large nationally representative sample of Irish parents and their children, we estimate a range of ordered probit models to isolate the causal effect of overweight and obesity on SRH. Our data includes independently and objectively recorded weight and height measures for parents and their children and we instrument for parental body mass index (BMI) status using the BMI of a biological child. After controlling for a range of individual, socioeconomic, health and lifestyle related variables, we find that being overweight has a negligible impact on SRH, while being obese has a practically and statistically significant negative impact on SRH, with these effects most pronounced for those who are most obese. We find only minor differences in these effects across gender. | |||||
Doherty, E. | 2014 | Socioeconomic Inequalities in Child Vaccination | Open | Health Economics & Policy Analysis | |
McCrory, C., O'Leary, N., Fraga, S., Riberio, A. I., Barros, H., Kartiosuo, N., Raitakari, O., Kivimaki, M., Vineis, P., Layte, R. | 2017 | Socioeconomic differences in children’s growth trajectories from infancy to early adulthood: evidence from four European countries | Open | Healthy Child Development | |
Background Methods Results Conclusions | |||||
McNally, S., Quigley, J. | 2014 | An Irish Cohort Study of Risk and Protective Factors for Infant Language Development at 9 Months. | Open | Infant & Child Development | |
This nationally representative study of Irish infants explores whether the set of child and environmental factors established as predicting language outcomes aged 3 years would also predict language and communication development as early as age 9 months. Associations between infant and environmental characteristics and infant language outcomes at 9 months, as measured on the ASQ 10-month communication questionnaire, were explored in a series of bivariate logistic regression models and in a fully adjusted multivariable logistic regression model. Infant gender, health, birthweight and temperament were significantly associated with passing the ASQ communication measure at 9 months. Being an only child and having some experience of relative childcare predicted positive communication outcomes. Infants of older mothers and mothers who spoke less to the child while doing other things were significantly less likely to pass. Infants of mothers with the lowest educational level were more likely than their peers to pass at 9 months. Unlike language outcomes at 3 years, low maternal education does not appear to be a risk factor for poorer outcomes at 9 months. This study adds significantly to the infant language development literature by focussing on communication outcomes in early infancy and identifying protective and risk factors at such an early stage. | |||||
O'Reilly, C., Quayle, M. | 2021 | Gender inequalities in time spent doing housework by children in Ireland: A nationally representative sample across two time points | Open | Infant and Child Development | |
Gender inequality in housework divisions is persistent. This study examined early-emerging patterns in gender roles via children’s gendered housework time in the Irish context using time-use diary and questionnaire data, controlling for key demographic variables. This study utilized longitudinal “Growing up in Ireland” data, comparing the same children’s behaviour at age 9 and 13. Participants were a nationally representative, weighted sample of school going children living in Ireland, including 4,135 girls, 3,831 boys and their caregivers. The results highlight that inequalities in domestic chores occur at nine and are even greater at 13: girls do more housework and children tend to do “gender typical” chores. Consequences are discussed in relation to gender inequality and policy implications. | |||||
Hadfield, K., O'Brien, F. K., & Gerow, A. | 2017 | Is level of prematurity a risk/plasticity factor at three years of age? | Open | Infant Behaviour and Development | |
Children born preterm have poorer outcomes than children born full-term, but the caregiving environment can ameliorate some of these differences. Recent research has proposed that preterm birth may be a plasticity factor, leading to better outcomes for preterm than full-term infants in higher quality environments. This analysis uses data from two waves of an Irish study of children (at 9 months and 3 years of age, n = 11,134 children) and their caregivers (n = 11,132 mothers, n = 9998 fathers) to investigate differences in how caregiving affects social, cognitive, and motor skills between full-term, late preterm, and very preterm children. Results indicate that parental emotional distress and quality of attachment are important for child outcomes. Both being born very preterm and late preterm continue to be risk factors for poorer outcomes at 3 years of age. Only fathers’ emotional distress significantly moderated the effect of prematurity on infants’ cognitive and social outcomes—no other interactions between prematurity and environment were significant. These interactions were somewhat in line with diathesis stress, but the effect sizes were too small to provide strong support for this model. There is no evidence that preterm birth is a plasticity factor. | |||||
Murray, A. | 2017 | Growing Up in Ireland and longitudinal research on educational transitions | Open | Inklusive Übergänge: (Inter)nationale Perspektiven auf Inklusionim Übergang von der Schule in weitere Bildung, Ausbildung oder Beschäftigung | |