Life at age 17: initial findings from the Growing Up in Scotland study (Sweep 11)

1 Introduction and background

This report presents findings about the lives of young people in Scotland aged 17. It uses data collected from Birth Cohort 1 (BC1) of the Growing Up in Scotland study (GUS) between November 2021 and June 2023. GUS is an important longitudinal research project which has tracked the lives of young people in Scotland from their early years, through childhood and now into adolescence. This report presents findings from the 11th full sweep of data collection with families in the study.

The report covers several aspects of young people’s lives including:

• Experience of school and educational aspirations
• Experience of further and higher education, apprenticeships and employment
• Relationships with parents and peers
• Free time activities, social media and risky behaviour
• Mental health and life satisfaction
• General health, physical activity and sleep.

The report presents high level findings only. There is a substantial amount of further analysis that can be done, both of the data collected in this sweep alone and through combination with previous sweeps. The report is intended to give a flavour of the topics covered by GUS and we encourage researchers to make use of the wealth of information collected over the past 20 years of the study.

To find out more about GUS, access existing research reports and articles, and sign up to receive updates, visit the study website: www.growingupinscotland.org.uk

1.1 Study background and methodology

This report draws on data collected from 2649 families in 2021-23 when most cohort members were aged 17. Reflecting the increased focus on young people’s views over those of parents in the Sweep 11 questionnaires, the findings presented in this report relate only to data collected from the young people themselves.

1.1.1 Study design

BC1 was initially comprised of a nationally representative sample of 5217 children living in Scotland when they were 10 months old and who were born between June 2004 and May 2005.

At Sweep 9 (age 12), a boost sample of 502 children of the equivalent age to children in the main cohort was recruited to compensate for differential and increasing non-response amongst disadvantaged groups. This sample took part in Sweep 10 and Sweep 11, with a lower response rate anticipated, given their demographic profile and shorter involvement in GUS.

Over the years, GUS has administered surveys to cohort members’ main carers, their partners, teachers and the cohort members themselves. Data collection with the young people has become an increasingly large part of the study, beginning with a short questionnaire at Sweep 7 (age 8). The surveys are generally administered in participants’ homes using a mixture of interviewer-led (CAPI) and self-completion modes (CASI). However, web (CAWI) and telephone (CATI) methodologies have also been used, especially in response to the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions on in-home data collection.

1.1.2 Sweep 11 methodology

Sweep 11 data collection included seven main elements outlined below. This report presents findings drawn from the first four elements^[6]:

1. A brief ‘household’ questionnaire which could be answered by either the cohort member (young person) or their main carer, where they were living together. This was completed either face-to-face (CAPI) or over the phone (CATI).

2. A face-to-face or telephone interview with the young person (CAPI or CATI).

3. A self-complete questionnaire with the young person (CASI or CAWI).

4. A face-to-face, telephone or self-complete questionnaire (CAPI, CAWI or CASI) with the cohort member’s main carer.

5. Height and weight measurements of the cohort member.

6. Cognitive assessments of the cohort member.

When Sweep 11 fieldwork was initially launched in November 2021, Scottish Government Covid-19 restrictions preventing data collection in respondent’s homes remained in place. Whilst interviewers were permitted to make contact on the doorstep, they could not enter people’s homes to conduct interviews. Instead, telephone interviews took the place of face-to-face data collection with young people and main carers until restrictions were lifted in May 2022 and in-home data collection could resume. Even after in-home data collection was permitted, participants could choose to complete their interview by phone if they preferred. The content of the young person’s self-complete questionnaire was deemed too sensitive to be conducted via telephone interviews and was instead completed online by cohort members whilst restrictions were in place. This helped ensure answers to these questions were more comparable across modes of completion, however there will likely still be mode effects in the survey responses^[7].

Fieldwork for Sweep 11 was conducted in two phases: phase 1 took place between November 2021 and November 2022, while phase 2 took place between December 2022 and June 2023.

1.2 Analysis and reporting

Analysis of the Sweep 11 data was conducted on behalf of the Scottish Government by researchers at the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), using both SPSS and R. The Sweep 11 dataset includes four different weights. For this report the young person cross-sectional weight was used (labelled DkWTchld in the dataset). The cross-sectional weight took into account a number of socio-demographic variables including number of parents in the family, employment status of the main carer, young person’s health, main carer’s health, household tenure, SIMD quintile of home address, household income, and urban-rural status. Along these parameters, the findings in the report are adjusted by weighting to be representative of young people aged 17 who were living in Scotland in 2021/22 and who were also living in Scotland at age 10 months. For more information on GUS weighting, please see the Sweep 11 user guide available from the data documentation page of the GUS website.

1.2.1 Response rates and missing cases

All figures presented in this report have been calculated to exclude missing cases and non-applicable answers unless otherwise stated, meaning the base sizes quoted will not match the total number of young people involved in the data collection.

Cases may be missing or non-applicable for a variety of reasons, such as:

• routing (e.g. where a respondent’s answer at a previous question meant they were not asked a follow up question)
• refusal or a “don’t know” response
• different response rates for young people and parents
• different response rates to the different survey elements.

The total number of interviews achieved at Sweep 11 with young people and parents/main carers are set out in Table 1-A. In particular the collection of cohort member self-complete data via web survey whilst Covid-19 restrictions were in place meant a lower response to questions in this section of the questionnaire.

1.2.2 Subgroup analysis

Subgroup analysis was conducted to look at differences by sex, disability and area deprivation. While GUS collects information about gender identity, for this report analysis was undertaken by sex to maintain comparability with reporting from previous sweeps. Information about the cohort member’s sex was collected from their parent or carer at the initial round of data collection and is therefore available for all young people who took part at Sweep 11. Information on gender identity is, however, missing for some young people who did not answer this question (for example because they did not complete the self-completion part of the questionnaire).

In this report, a young person is considered to be disabled if it was reported in the survey that they had ‘physical or mental health conditions or illnesses which lasted or were expected to last 12 months or more’ and affected their ‘ability to do activities normal for someone their age’ either ‘a lot’ or ‘a little’. This question was asked of the main carer/parent at earlier sweeps and re-confirmed at Sweep 11. At Sweep 11, up-to-date details were therefore only obtained in cases where the parent or carer completed an interview. There was no alternative source of this information at Sweep 11. Mainly due to the covid restrictions on data collection mentioned above, parent response at sweep 11 was lower than usual for the study and lower than for young people. This has the effect of lowering the number of cases included for disability comparisons^[8]. Area deprivation was measured using the 2020 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)^[9]. This was divided into five equally sized groups (quintiles), ordered by level of area deprivation – SIMD quintile 1 represents the most deprived areas, and SIMD quintile 5 the least deprived.

Only differences that were statistically significant at the 95% level have been included, however not all differences have been reported (such as where the percentages involved were very small or there was no clear trend).

1.2.3 Terminology and presentation

Other points relating to terminology to bear in mind:

• Although the report refers to young people aged 17, a minority were aged 18 at the time of the interview (18.1%) or 16 (2.1%). 79.9% were aged 17.
• Small figures (<2%) are sometimes not labelled in charts to improve readability.
• Area deprivation categories are described using Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintiles. Thus, SIMD 1 represents the most deprived fifth of areas while SIMD 5 represents the least deprived fifth of areas.
• Where a question refers to the time since the previous GUS interview, this was usually around 2 years ago, but could be up to 4 years for some participants.

This report was produced in line with ISO 20252 requirements.