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Children’s Profile at School Entry (CPSE) collection, 2008 – 2015

Study number (SN): 0056-00

CITATION

ABOUT THE STUDY

The Children’s Profile at School Entry (CPSE) study was conducted between 2008 and 2015 as part of the wider Preparing for Life evaluation by the UCD Geary Institute at University College Dublin, Ireland. The Preparing for Life (PFL) intervention was developed by the Northside Partnership as a five year school readiness intervention, starting in pregnancy and lasting until the child started school. The CPSE study took place in parallel to the PFL evaluation, and provided an annual, representative survey of the levels of school readiness of all Junior Infant children in the PFL catchment area – both those participating in PFL intervention and the general population not participating in PFL. The annual survey (1) indicated the general level of school readiness of children attending schools in the PFL catchment area, (2) indicated whether the PFL programme was generating positive externalities, and (3) served as a baseline measure of school readiness for the PFL cohort.

The CPSE study was undertaken by the PFL evaluation team at UCD Geary Institute. A cross-sectional design was developed to collect information via surveys which were completed by (1) the primary school teacher and (2) the primary caregiver of each Junior Infant child. Data were collected at the start of each school year, for eight years between 2008 and 2015. Pupil school readiness was assessed in both the teacher and caregiver surveys using the Short Early Development Instrument (S-EDI; Janus & Offord, 2000), and using a series of measures that were constructed by the PFL evaluation team. Teachers were also asked a series of demographic questions including their age, professional qualifications, how long they had been teaching in general. Caregivers were asked socio-demographic information, along with standardised measures of mental well-being and parenting.

MAIN TOPICS

• Children
• Early childhood
• Education
• Family environment
• Health
• Physiological development
• Emotional development
• Evaluation 
• Parental role
• Mental health
• Well-being (Health)
• Schoolteachers

COVERAGE, UNIVERSE, METHODOLOGY

Population

All children attending schools in the original and the extended PFL catchment area were eligible for participation in the study. A survey was completed by the teacher and by the primary caregiver of each Junior Infant child. Although the child was the focus of the study, additional information was collected on their teacher and on their caregiver. 

Observation units

• Individual
• Families / Households

Temporal coverage

From 10/2008 to 12/2015

Time dimension

Repeated cross-sectional study; Eight waves in total from 2008 – 2015. Data was collected every year on Junior Infant classes in the catchment area, between October and December (academic term 1).

Geographical coverage

Country: Rep of Ireland

Region: Leinster

County: Dublin

Town: Dublin (North)

Methods of data collection

• PAPI (Paper and Pencil Interviewing): Self-completion (distributed by post, email or other)
• CASI (Computer Assisted Self Interviewing). Survey Monkey etc.

Sampling procedures

In order to assess the level of school readiness in the PFL catchment area, a cross-sectional design was deployed. All teachers and parents of junior infant children either residing in or attending schools in the PFL catchment areas were eligible for participation in the study. Parents were presented with an information and consent form which described the project in detail. Parents had to give consent to complete the questionnaire themselves and also for their child’s teacher to complete the questionnaire. While the study is interested in gaining an index of school readiness for children who reside in the PFL catchment area, parents of classmates of children who do not reside in the area themselves, were also asked to participate to ensure no one child was excluded or singled out in the classroom. It was anticipated that the majority of children living in the PFL catchment areas attend one of the two schools located in the area. However it was realised that a small number of additional pupils could be surveyed by approaching schools outside the PFL catchment area. Therefore, select children, identified by the school principals, from three additional schools were invited to participate. Once collected, data from all schools and parents were aggregated.

In terms of the PFL children within the CPSE sample, recruitment into the PFL Evaluation through one of two avenues: (1) the maternity hospital or (2) in the community. Recruitment began in late January 2008 in five communities in North Dublin. Due to the relatively slow uptake rate within these communities, the PFL catchment area was expanded to include three additional areas in North Dublin in January 2009. A second expansion was initiated in late June 2009 to include two more communities in North Dublin. An in-depth analysis of the demographic similarity showed that the expansion areas were relatively similar to the original PFL catchment area on key socio-demographic characteristics.

The PFL Evaluation was a randomised control trial or RCT, in which participants were randomly allocated to one of two treatment groups. Randomisation provided each participant with an equal opportunity of receiving either the low or high PFL treatment and therefore, on average, the observed and unobserved characteristics of the participants should be distributed evenly across the two groups before the programme began. PFL participants were randomised after written informed consent was obtained. An unconditional probability randomisation procedure presented each participant with an equal chance of being randomised into the low or high treatment group. After consenting to take part in the PFL Programme and Evaluation, the participant pressed a key on a computer which randomly allocated her treatment group assignment. The computerised randomisation programme created an array equal to the size of the number of people to be in the randomised group. In the case of the PFL Programme this array consisted of 250 possible PFL numbers populated with a one or zero. This array was then shuffled using a random number generator to randomly assign the numbers a location in the array. This process resulted in a list of ones and zeros where the numbers were in a random order and were written to a file one per line.

As each participant clicked on the randomisation website they was assigned a one or zero which corresponded to the two treatment groups in the study and their PFL code was inserted beside the one or zero in the file. To ensure randomisation was not compromised, once the participant pressed the key on a computer, an email was generated which included the participant’s unique ID code and assignment condition. This email was automatically sent to the PFL programme manager and the PFL evaluation manager. If there were any attempts to reassign participants from one group to another, by either directly changing the database or repeating the randomisation procedure, a second email would automatically highlight this intentional subversion. Tests of baseline differences between the high and low PFL treatment groups found that the two groups did not statistically differ on 97% of the measures analysed, indicating that the randomisation process was successful.

Response rate

Table 1: CPSE sample size per wave

DATA AND DOCUMENTATION: FILES’ DESCRIPTION

Data (available through ISSDA application process)

Documentation (available for download)

LINKS

UCD Geary Institute at University College Dublin: http://www.ucd.ie/geary/

Preparing For Life evaluation at the UCD Geary Institute: http://geary.ucd.ie/preparingforlife/

Children’s Profile at School Entry: http://geary.ucd.ie/preparingforlife/?page_id=57

ACCESS INFORMATION

Accessing the data

To access the data, please complete an ISSDA Data Request Form for Research Purposes - Pseudonymised Datasets, sign it, and send it to ISSDA by email.

Data will be disseminated on receipt of a fully completed, signed form. Incomplete or unsigned forms will be returned to the data requester for completion.

Copyright

Copyright of Northside Partnership

Acknowledgements

Any work based in whole or part on resources provided by the ISSDA, should acknowledge: “Children’s Profile at School Entry (CPSE) collection, 2008 – 2015 " and also ISSDA, in the following way: “Accessed via the Irish Social Science Data Archive - www.ucd.ie/issda”.

Citation requirement

The data and its creators shall be cited in all publications and presentations for which the data have been used. The bibliographic citation may be in the form suggested by the archive or in the form required by the publication.

Bibliographical citation

Northside Partnership; Orla Doyle; UCD Geary Institute PFL Evaluation Team (2017). Children’s Profile at School Entry (CPSE) collection 2008 – 2015. [data collection]. Version 1. Dublin: Irish Social Science Data Archive [distributor] SN: 0056-00. www.ucd.ie/issda/cpse

Notification

The user shall notify the Irish Social Science Data Archive of all publications where she or he has used the data.