External Publications Using GUI Data

This study investigated trajectories of concomitant internalising, externalising, and peer problems, and associated risk factors for group-membership, using a person-centered approach to better understand heterogeneity in subgroups identified. A cohort of 7,507 children in Ireland was followed from infancy to late childhood (50.3%, males; 84.9% Irish). The parent-version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used when children were 3, 5, 7 and 9 years of age. Information on antecedent risk factors was collected when children were 9 months. Group-based multi-trajectory modelling and multinomial logistic regression were used. Six subgroups of children with distinct profiles were identified, evidencing both homotypic and heterotypic comorbidity. No support of a ‘pure’ internalising, externalising or peer problems group was found in any identified trajectory group. Difficulties in one problem domain indicated the presence of difficulty in another problem domain for all children in elevated groups. Risk factors associated with group-membership were complex, with only three common factors across elevated groups: prenatal exposure to smoking, maternal education, and maternal stress. Specific risk factors for group-membership included low birth weight, sex, maternal age, maternal depression, family composition, social class, medical card status and quality of attachment. Despite some overlap in predictors, the combination of predictors specific to each group would suggest tailored programming. For children with the most acute problems, programming targets should include families with boys, born with low birth weight, exposed to smoking prenatally, with mothers who have lower levels of education, postnatal depression, increased stress and fewer financial resources.

The present study examines whether breastfeeding is associated with neuro-developmental advantages at 9 months of age on a standardised measure of infant development in a large cohort study of Irish children. It is hypothesised that if breast-milk confers an independent benefit, infants who were never breastfed will have reached fewer developmental milestones than those who were partially or exclusively breastfed, after controlling for putative confounding variables. Families with infants aged 9-months were recruited as part of a nationally representative sample for the birth cohort of the Growing Up in Ireland study (n = 11,134). Information was collected from mothers on breastfeeding practices, socio-demographic characteristics and developmental progress during a household interview. Parent-report items on development covered communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving and personal-social skills. Analysis of pass/fail status in each developmental domain using binary logistic regression showed a positive effect of any breastfeeding on gross motor, fine motor, problem solving and personal-social skills (but not communication) and these remained after adjustment for a range of confounding variables. There was, however, little evidence of a dose–response effect or advantage of exclusive over partial breastfeeding. A clear advantage of breastfeeding on infant development was demonstrated. However, the lack of a dose–response association on pass rates suggests that the breastfeeding effect may be confounded by other unobserved factors or that there is a critical threshold during which time the effect of breast milk may be particularly salient for bolstering brain development.

To describe response rates and characteristics associated with response to the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System study in Ireland (PRAMS Ireland). Using hospital discharge records of live births at a large, urban, obstetric hospital, a sampling frame of approximately 2,400 mother-infant pairs were used to alternately sample 1,200 women. Mothers’ information including name, address, parity, age and infant characteristics such as sex and gestational age at delivery were extracted from records. Modes of contact included an invitation letter with option to opt out of the study, three mail surveys, a reminder letter and text message reminder for remaining non-respondents. Sixty-one per cent of women responded to the PRAMS Ireland survey over a 133 day response period. Women aged <30, single women, multiparous women and women with a preterm delivery were less likely to respond. Women participating in PRAMS Ireland were similar to the national birth profile in 2011 which had a mean age of 32, were 40 % primiparous, 33 % single or never married and had a 28 % caesarean section rate. Survey and protocol changes are required to increase response rates above recommended Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) thresholds of 65 % within the recommended 90 day data collection cycle. Additional efforts such as stratification and over-sampling are required to increase representativeness among hard to reach groups such as younger, single and multiparous women before expanding the project to an ongoing, national surveillance system in Ireland.

The aim of this study was to identify, using cluster analysis, novel sleep phenotypes in a population based cohort of infants, and to explore the associations between infant sleep profiles and their mothers’ health and well-being. 11,134 mothers of 9-month old infants were interviewed as part of the Growing Up in Ireland National Longitudinal study and reported on their health and infant’s sleep patterns. 16 infant sleep variables were recorded together with measures of parental stress, depression, health and well-being. Multiple iterations of a two-step hierarchical cluster analysis were carried out to identify the optimum number of clusters and the subset of parental-reported sleep variables required to identify distinct sleep profiles. Four distinct sleep profiles were identified based on the following variables; (1) infant sleep duration at night, (2) parental sleep duration, (3) does baby wake during night (yes, no)? (4) Usual sleep location for most of the night and, (5) parental reporting of problem infant sleep patterns. This identified two less favorable profiles with both infants and mothers sleeping less and where mothers are more likely to report their infants’ sleep patterns as problematic. Mothers of infants belonging to these sleep profiles were more likely to have higher levels of stress, depressive symptoms, and poorer self-reported health than other sleep profiles. Breastfeeding was associated with both groups and rates were highest in a group of infants that were more likely to co-sleep with their parents and have diverse ethnic backgrounds. This study demonstrates, for the first time, two infant sleep profiles with distinct phenotypical frameworks that are significantly associated with maternal stress, depression, and poorer self-report of health.

The Growing Up in Ireland Infant Cohort dataset (n = 11,134) includes information on fertility treatments for over 400 infants. IVF (28.1 %) and IVF-related treatments (17.8 %) were the most frequent, but there was also a high percentage following clomiphene citrate alone (31.5 %). Infants born following fertility treatment were much more likely to be in higher income families, and this relationship was not accounted for by older mothers in wealthier families. Analysis of fertility-treatment pregnancies among Irish infants, controlling for income and maternal age, shows a greater risk of multiple birth and low birth-weight, although the latter appears to be largely related to the former especially for IVF-type treatments.

Background
The incidence and prevalence of childhood chronic disease is increasing worldwide. Obesity, poor diet and lifestyle may be more prevalent in children with a chronic disease than in their healthier contemporaries. The Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study is a nationally representative cohort study of children living in the Republic of Ireland. The study has collected information from 8568 9-year-old Irish children on their experiences within their families, childcare settings, schools and communities, and how these impact on all aspects of children’s development.

Aims
This study aims to establish the prevalence of parentally reported chronic disease in children in Ireland and to describe their diet and lifestyle.

Methods
This study analyzed data from the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal child cohort study and compared the diet, lifestyle and prevalence of obesity in children with and without a parentally reported chronic disease.

Results
Overall, 954 parents in the sample (11.1%) reported that their child had a chronic illness and 43.4% of these children are hampered by it in their daily activities. Respiratory disorders were the commonest type of chronic disease (46%) reported. Children with a chronic illness were more likely to be overweight or obese (32.9% compared to 25.0% of those without a chronic illness, p < 0.001). Children with chronic illness were also found to have a poorer diet, take less exercise and experienced significantly more social isolation than their peers (all p < 0.05).

Conclusions
Public health measures to address diet and lifestyle choices need to be cognisant of the needs of children with chronic diseases and tailor activities offered to be inclusive of all children. Medical professionals having contact with children with chronic conditions need to remember to reinforce the importance of diet and lifestyle whenever possible and to explore with families solutions to barriers to making healthy diet and lifestyle choices.

The relationship between parental background and children’s educational outcomes has been a dominant theme within the sociology of education. There has been an on-going debate as to the relative merits of explanations which focus on the role of socio-cultural reproduction and those which focus on rational choice. However, many empirical studies within the social stratification tradition fail to allow for children’s own agency in shaping the relationship between social background and schooling outcomes. This paper draws on the first wave of a large-scale longitudinal study of over 8,000 nine-year-old children in Ireland, which combines information from parents, school principals, teachers and children themselves. Both social class and parental education are found to have significant effects on reading and mathematics test scores among nine year olds. These effects are partly mediated by home-based educational resources and activities, parents’ educational expectations for their child, and parents’ formal involvement in the school. More importantly, children’s own engagement with, and attitudes to, school significantly influence their academic performance. The influence of children’s own attitudes and actions can thus reinforce or mitigate the effect of social background factors. The analysis therefore provides a bridge between the large body of research on the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the emerging research and policy literature on children’s rights.

It is well established that cultural and economic resources imparted to children vary significantly by social class. Literature on concerted cultivation has highlighted the way out-of-school activities can reproduce social inequalities in the classroom. Within this literature however, little attention has been given to the role of gender in concerted cultivation. In this paper, we use data from the first wave of the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study to consider how both social class and gender influence the out-of-school activities of children. Moreover, we examine how out-of-school activities, class and gender impact on children’s school engagement and academic achievement. We find that while childrearing logics tend to operate within social class categories, there is an additional cultural aspect of gender in the uptake of different types of out-of-school activities. Our findings suggest the need to move beyond explanations of concerted cultivation to explain gender differences in mathematics and reading attainment.

Sociologists of childhood have stressed the importance of children’s experience in the present and children as agents who actively construct their own lives and influence relationships with family and friends. Current thinking in the field of child well-being emphasises the need to consult children as experts in their own lives. Findings from research with children have led to important insights about what contributes to well-being. Relationships with family and friends have been found to be central to well-being whilst bullying by peers deeply impacts on their well-being. Shared activities appear to be the context for children to not only master competences but also learn about and negotiate relationships. The Growing Up in Ireland interviews with 9 year old children were re-analysed with a view to exploring these crucial domains and how they impact on the children’s well-being. The children were found to have a wide circle of family connections and were particularly close to their mothers although also close to their fathers. Grandparents played a significant role in their lives and their relationships with siblings were often positive but did fluctuate. Reasons for closeness centred around trust. Lack of availability due to work was a key contributor to children feeling less close to a family member. The children were involved in a wide range of structured activities after school and at the weekend, This was usually balanced with free time although some ‘hurried’ children had frenetic lifestyles. Involvement in unstructured activities such as free play was particularly associated with time with friends and choice. Friendship was characterised by sharing and trust. On the other hand, bullying by peers had been experienced by many of the children and almost all were conscious of the danger of becoming bullied. The wider issues of work-family balance and its impact on children, the predominance of bullying and children’s right to be heard are reflected upon.

In this paper we make use of the 9-year-old wave of the Growing Up in Ireland study to analyse multidimensional deprivation in Ireland. The Alkire and Foster adjusted headcount ratio approach (AHR; Alkire and Foster, Journal of Public Economics, 95, 476–487, 2011a, Journal of Economic Inequality, 9, 289–314, 2011b) applied here constitutes a significant improvement on union and intersection approaches and allows for the decomposition of multidimensional poverty in terms of dimensions and sub-groups. The approach involves a censoring of data such that deprivations count only for those above the specified multidimensional threshold leading to a stronger set of interrelationships between deprivation dimensions. Our analysis shows that the composition of the adjusted headcount ratio is influenced by a range of socio-economic factors. For less favoured socio-economic groups dimensions relating to material deprivation are disproportionately represented while for the more advantaged groups, those relating to behavioral and emotional issues and social interaction play a greater role. Notwithstanding such variation in composition, our analysis showed that the AHCR varied systematically across categories of household type, and the social class, education and age group of the Primary Caregiver. Furthermore, these variables combined in a cumulative manner. The most systematic variation was in relation to the headcount of those above the multidimensional threshold rather than intensity, conditional on being above that cut-off point. Without seeking to arbitrate on the relative value of composite indices versus disaggregated profiles, our analysis demonstrates that there is much to be gained from adopting an approach with clearly understood axiomatic properties. Doing so allows one to evaluate the consequences of the measurement strategy employed for the understanding of levels of multidimensional deprivation, the nature of such deprivation profiles and socioeconomic risk patterns. Ultimately it permits an informed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the particular choices made.

Internationally and in Ireland, much of the research around gender and educational engagement has centred on the academic differences between boys and girls (Warrington and Younger 2000; Francis 2009; O’Connor 2007). Less is known however about the factors shaping affective school engagement and student self-concept and how this can affect participation in learning. Children and young people emphasise the affective or emotional as much as the learning aspects of school life (Alexander 2008). Drawing on data from the 9-year cohort of the Growing Up in Ireland study, this paper examines self-concept among boys and girls in Irish primary schools. The findings show important differences in terms of the affective elements of school engagement, with boys more likely than girls to score significantly lower levels on measures of ‘good’ behaviour and intellectual school status, while girls score significantly lower on freedom from anxiety than boys. The findings also illustrate that predictors of disengagement are about more than the child’s gender – in that working class children and students with special educational needs are faring less well in terms of affective engagement in school.

The Growing Up Healthy in Families Across the Globe project is an international collaboration examining the potential for harmonised analysis using five longitudinal studies (from New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland). All five studies follow the lives of children, are interested in the dynamics of family change and work to inform policy to potentially improve population well-being across the life-course. Comparative analysis from harmonised longitudinal studies, where change over time is emphasised, provides a unique view to determine how and why environments change, which environments are supportive and which are not. This paper discusses the challenges and tasks involved when preparing and conducting harmonised analysis, and initial findings from the Growing Up Healthy project are discussed. The studies were, from New Zealand, Te Hoe Nuku Roa, the Pacific Island Families Study and Growing Up in New Zealand, and from Scotland and Ireland Growing Up in Scotland and Growing Up in Ireland. Post hoc data harmonisation of measures resulted in the identification of several closely aligned variables. The harmonised descriptive variables from the five studies highlight many similarities across the studies. A risk factor model to predict child development outcomes (using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) was developed and resulted in very similar patterns of risk in New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland. Risks included: maternal relationship status, maternal education, smoking in pregnancy, maternal self-reported health and maternal long-standing illness. The insights will be of interest to all those concerned with child development in contemporary New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and other similar countries.

Children with disabilities experience significantly poorer socio-emotional outcomes than their peers without disabilities. However, research evidence is scarce about children with both disability and migration background, the group which this study aimed to investigate using data from a national longitudinal study. Secondary data analyses were conducted on a sample of 7290 children (weighted with missing values imputed). Significant differences in socio-emotional outcomes were found in relation to impairment status but not in relation to migration. Having an impairment and activity limitation significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing poorer socio-emotional outcomes over time. Our findings highlight a higher risk of socio-emotional problems among children with disabilities, especially among children from lower income backgrounds and with parents with lower educational attainment. These findings clearly require policy development on two fronts: to raise professional and community awareness on these issues and to strengthen the capacity of health, education and social care systems to support schools, families, and communities.

This paper examines multidimensional poverty for three waves of a cohort of Irish children ranging from ages 9 to 17. Poverty is measured over the dimensions of health, education and family resources and both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty is examined. Both show a clear gradient with respect to maternal education. The dynamics of both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty are also analysed. The greatest degree of mobility is observed with respect to family resources. Mobility also is higher for children whose mothers have lower levels of education, with net movements into rather than out of poverty.

Although there is a wealth of research addressing the association between mental health and school absenteeism, there are calls for a better understanding of how mental health difficulties might predict SAPs (Egger et al., 2003; Finning et al., 2022; Ingul et al., 2019; Wood et al., 2012). The aim of this paper was to create a more nuanced understanding of SAPs by exploring how different constellations of mental health difficulties might be predictive of absenteeism in 9-year-olds. Using a sample of Irish 9-year-olds (N = 8570) from the Growing Up In Ireland Study (GUI’98), the research used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify combinations of mental health symptoms. Twenty items from the Strengths and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ) were used to measure a range of emotional and behavioural difficulties. The analysis yielded four mental health classes—High Risk of Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD), High Risk of Emotional Difficulties (ED), High Risk of Behavioural Difficulties (BD) and Low Risk of Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD). The study assessed whether rates of student absenteeism varied across different classes of mental health as identified through LCA and explored risk factors associated with different classes. Children in the high-risk mental health symptomology groups had significantly higher odds of absenteeism compared to the low-risk class and significantly greater odds of experiencing multiple family, school and demographic risk factors. The distinct profiles of mental health symptoms observed within the classes and their patterns of associations with risk factors and days absent indicated classes were theoretically distinct. The results illustrate the importance of recognising the relationship between mental health and school absenteeism in primary school children when developing early intervention strategies for SAPs. As one of the few studies to focus on 9-year-olds, the current study contributes to current knowledge on the complexities of emerging SAPs in primary school children.

Keywords
Mental health, School attendance problems, School avoidance, Truancy, Risk factors

Background
Taking oral antibiotics during childhood has been linked with an increased risk of childhood obesity. This study assessed any potential association in number of courses of antibiotics taken between 2–3 and 4–5 years of age and body mass trajectory up to age 5.

Methods
The study was a secondary analysis of 8186 children and their parents from the infant cohort of the Irish National Longitudinal Study of Children. Antibiotic use was measured by parental recall between ages 2–3 and 4–5. Longitudinal models described the relationship between antibiotic exposure and body mass index (BMI) standard deviation scores and binary outcomes, and examined interactions between covariates, which included socioeconomic status, diet assessed by food frequency questionnaires and maternal BMI.

Results
Any antibiotic usage between 2 and 3 years did not predict risk of overweight or obesity at age 5. Four or more courses of antibiotics between 2 and 3 years were independently associated with obesity at age 5 (odds ratio 1.6, 95% confidence interval 1.11–2.31). Effect size was modest (coefficient + 0.09 body mass SD units, standard error 0.04, P = 0.037). Maternal BMI modified the relationship: ≥ 4 courses of antibiotics between 2 and 3 years were associated with a + 0.12 body mass SD units increase in weight at age 5 among children of normal-weight mothers (P = 0.035), but not in children of overweight mothers.

Conclusions
Number of antibiotic courses, rather than antibiotic use, may be an important factor in any link between early antibiotic exposure and subsequent childhood obesity. Research is needed to confirm differential effects on babies of normal versus overweight/obese mothers independent of socioeconomic factors.

This study investigates the long-term effects of victimization from middle adolescence to late adolescence and early adulthood, examining emotional and behavioral problems, peer relationships, and smoking habits and sleeping difficulties. The study also explores how these outcomes can persist into early adulthood, taking into consideration early victimization experiences, gender, cognitive ability, and family social class. The total sample included 7525 participants, spanning the ages of 13, 17, and 20, from the Child Cohort of the Growing Up in Ireland study (48.9% male). The path analysis model suggests that victimization is associated with behavioral problems at age 17, and it is also linked to emotional problems and sleeping difficulties at both ages 17 and 20. Additionally, sleeping difficulties, smoking habits, and indices of emotional and behavioral adjustment exhibit some stability between ages 13 and 17, as well as 17 and 20. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.