WHAT EFFECT does the manner of your birth have on your future health? Are children in creches happier than children cared for by childminders? And what impact does the neighbourhood have on a child’s development?
Researchers hope to find the answers to these and many other questions when the biggest-ever study of nine-month-old infants gets under way in the coming days.
As part of the State-funded “Growing Up In Ireland”, project, some 10,000 infants and their parents and carers will be studied in the coming months.
The families will be selected randomly from the Child Benefit Register and asked to take part. In-depth interviews with the infants’ parents and carers will cover questions about health, development, daily routines, family life and parental lifestyles.
Researchers will return to the families when the infants are three years old, to see how they have developed in the interim.
The “Growing Up In Ireland” study began last year with the commitment to interview 18,000 children across the State in an effort to understand what factors affect children’s development and well-being.
A team of 20 researchers led by the ESRI and Trinity College Dublin are supported by a panel of more than 45 experts and an advisory forum of 84 children.
The project began with the interviewing of 8,500 nine-year-olds. Those children were selected randomly through the primary system and more than 2,000 teachers were also involved in the project. The children sat the Drumcondra test in English and maths at school and were also interviewed at home with their parents.
They were asked about issues such as diet, day-to-day activities, likes and dislikes and relationships with parents.
That fact-finding exercise is now complete and the results are being analysed. Prof Sheila Greene, co-director of the project, said the findings would be available next January.
The children and their families will be revisited when the children are 13.
Prof James Williams, co-director of the project, said the information researchers would collect from families would “add to a growing bank of invaluable data” and inform future policy decisions.
