CSO Frontier Series outputs may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release.
Learn more about CSO Frontier Series outputs.
Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is the national longitudinal study of children and young people in Ireland. It is a collaborative study between the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Department of Children, Disability and Equality (DCDE). The CSO is responsible for the survey itself: designing and building the survey; collecting, processing, and analysing the data, and facilitating data access to researchers and policy makers. DCDE has responsibility for the wider elements of the GUI study: engaging with policy and scientific stakeholders to gather requirements; consulting with children and young people; identifying research needs, data priorities and objectives, and promoting the use of GUI data for research and policy development. GUI is a critical instrument which facilitates policy makers and researchers to examine the factors that shape the development of children and young people in Ireland and which, through this, contributes to the setting of responsive policies and the design of services for children and families.
The GUI study was established in 2006 and originally followed two groups of children in Ireland: Cohort ’98 and Cohort ’08. Cohort ’98 joined the study when they were nine years old, and Cohort ’08 joined the study when they were nine months old. These two cohorts have been surveyed at regular intervals since then. Cohort ’98 were aged 25 at their last wave of data collection, and Cohort ’08 will be aged 17/18 in the next wave of data collection planned for 2025. In September 2024, the CSO and DCDE launched a third GUI cohort: Cohort ’24. Around 16,000 households with nine-month-old infants will have been invited to participate by the end of data collection for Wave 1 of Cohort ’24 in September 2025.
For Growing Up in Ireland Cohort ’08 at three years, the focus of the study was on child outcomes in the following three domains:
For Cohort ’08 Wave 1, all children who would be nine months old between September 2008 and April 2009 (that is, at the time of interview) were identified from the Child Benefit Register. This resulted in a total eligible population of 41,185 children, which was then pre-stratified by marital status, county of residence, nationality, and number of children in the claim. The sample was then selected using a simple systematic selection procedure based on a random start and constant sampling fraction.
Growing Up in Ireland is a longitudinal study and follows the same children and their families across each wave. Thus, the target sample for Wave 2 was the 11,134 households who participated at Wave 1 of the study. No additions were made to this sample, and the only exits were due to interwave non-response or attrition (including emigration), or cases where the child had sadly deceased. A total of 9,793 households participated in Wave 2 of the study.
Data collection for Cohort ’08 Wave 2 took place between December 2010 and July 2011 and was carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
Families who had participated at Wave 1 were first sent a letter and an information sheet about Wave 2, followed by an initial face-to-face visit from an interviewer to organise an appointment at which to carry out the interview. Inclusion in Wave 2 of the study was on an opt-out basis, and consent forms were signed by the parent(s)/guardian(s) prior to interview. The main interview with the primary resident parent (or primary caregiver) was conducted in the home using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) – that is, by an interviewer using a laptop. The more sensitive questions were self-completed by the primary resident parent on the laptop (Computer-Assisted Self-Interview; CASI). However, respondents could request that the sensitive questions be administered by the interviewer in the same manner as the main questionnaire, or to self-complete on paper instead of using the laptop. Information sheets and questionnaires were also available in Irish, Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Chinese, French and Polish, and a translator was provided upon request.
Primary resident parents were asked, in the sensitive questionnaire, whether the child had a non-resident parent. Where they indicated that there was a non-resident parent, the primary resident parents answered some additional questions and were then asked to provide contact details. Postal self-complete questionnaires were subsequently sent to the non-resident parents whose contact details had been supplied.
| Number of Responses | |
| Primary resident parents who completed the primary caregiver main interview | 9,793 |
| Primary resident parents who completed the primary caregiver sensitive interview | 9,706 |
| Primary resident parents who reported that the child had a non-resident parent | 1,172 |
| Non-resident parents whose contact details were provided | 398 |
| Non-resident parents who completed the non-resident parent postal questionnaire | 137 |
The data used in this publication comes from two questionnaires that were used at Wave 2 of data collection for Cohort ’08. The responses used from the primary resident parents were collected through the ‘Primary Caregiver Supplementary Questionnaire’, while responses from non-resident parents came from the ‘Non-Resident Parent Questionnaire.’ Questionnaires are available to view on the Growing Up in Ireland website.
Non-Resident Parent: A parent of the child who did not live at the child’s primary residence at the time of survey, excluding those who were temporarily living outside of the home.
Primary Resident Parent: A parent of the child who lived at the same primary residence as the child at the time of survey, and who declared themself to be the child’s primary caregiver (that is, the person who provided most care to the child and who was most knowledgeable about their development).
Researchers can apply to access the Growing Up in Ireland datasets on a confidential and anonymised basis through the Irish Social Sciences Data Archive (ISSDA). These files are known as Anonymised Microdata Files (AMFs). Applications for data relating to Cohort '08 can be made through ISSDA. More detailed files, known as the Researcher Microdata Files (RMFs), may be made available to researchers at the discretion of the CSO, also on a strictly confidential and anonymous basis. Applications for access to the RMFs are made through the CSO.
The Cohort ’08 Wave 2 non-resident parent data used in this analysis is available on the RMF but not the AMF, due to the sensitive nature of the data.
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.