From an estimated 357,000 secondary school students, 2,253 (0.6%) students completed the Phase 17 questionnaire of the CensusAtSchool survey. It was available between September 2017 and August 2018. The Phase 17 questionnaire covered a variety of topics including:

• FIFA World Cup
• dietary habits/choices
• trust in the media
• student fitness.

Interesting findings from Phase 17 results: 

• Half of students (50.2%) use social media as their main news source. Almost three in five females (56.2%) identified social media as the main source compared to two in four male students (40.7%). However, when asked to rank the level of trust in news sources, students ranked social media and magazines as being less trustworthy than other established media sources. See Figure 1, 2 and 3.

• Over a third of students (36.9%) ranked the reason “To have fun” as the main motivating reason to play sport. The least important reason was “To win”. See Figure 4.

• Skill was the most popular physical ability selected by students. Over a quarter of males (26.6%) selected strength as the ability they would prefer compared to only one in ten (9.9%) of females. See Figure 5.

• Female students have a slightly lower average resting heart rate (68 beats per minute (bpm)) than males (71bpm). After a short burst of exercise, males displayed a greater percentage rise in their average bpm (51.7% increase) than females (38.0% increase). See Figure 6.

• Male students were more likely to know that the 2018 World Cup was in Russia than female students. Male students were also over two times more likely to correctly guess the winner of the World Cup as 14.4% of male students guessed correctly compared to only 6.3% of female students. See Figure 7.

• The most popular food for female students was carbohydrates with 39.1% of females selecting it. The most popular food type for male students was protein with over half of male students (52.5%) selecting it. See Figure 8a and 8b.

• Over half of students (56.5%) reported that they did not eat crisps and one fifth of students (21.7%) did not have sweets. Two in five students (41%) reported having at least two portions of both fruit and vegetables usually. See Figure 9.

• Kylie Jenner was the most popular choice for all students when asked who they would like to live like for a day, selected by 6.6% of students. Gender differences are evident with 11.6% of female students choosing Kylie Jenner while 8.4% of male students choosing Cristiano Ronaldo. See Table 1, Figure 10a and 10b.

Background information:
CensusAtSchool is a non-profit making international project. It is funded by organisations interested in promoting good use of statistics, mathematics and data handling. Ireland became involved in CensusAtSchool in 2009. Four Irish bodies are collaborating in this project:

• the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST)
• the CSO
• Project Maths 
• the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).

The Irish website, www.censusatschool.ie, has been in place since 2009.

Scan the QR code below to view this release online or go to
http://www.cso.ie