Creativity, strategy, collaboration: The future of data collection on children in Scotland

Data collection on children in Scotland: Exploring the intricate connections of prenatal conditions, environmental factors, and child development.

How do unforeseen events like illness, exposure to pollution, and high stress levels during pregnancy affect a baby’s life course? My research looks at how this relatively short period of time is so pivotal for our futures. It is a fascinating area but challenging to study. Inviting pregnant women to participate in a long-term research programme whilst their children grow requires a lot of investment and takes a long time. To address these challenges, we have to be creative, we have to be strategic, but most importantly, we have to work together – to collaborate.

As a small, well-integrated country with globally significant research institutions, Scotland is well placed to lead in bringing different disciplines together to give our children the best possible start in life. In practice, however, this work often means linking information collected in very different settings to help us build a coherent picture of how an input in one domain can influence an output some years later in a different one.

Case study: Glasgow’s integrated approach

In recent research including Glasgow City Education Services, Public Health Scotland, and academic partners, we have brought together data on health, social and educational outcomes to map the development of over 56,000 children from the prenatal period through to early adolescence¹. This exciting study is aiming to uncover more about how our earliest days could affect a lifetime of development.

We were also recently awarded with major funding to study the impact of COVID-19 Health Impact on Long-term Child Development in Scotland² (CHILDS). Here we will look at how COVID-19 infection during pregnancy could affect child development up to five years hence, as well as how changes in public safety and social distancing affected care and outcomes for all Scottish children born during the same period.

Children’s self-control skills are one of the best predictors of academic achievement, risk-taking in adolescence, health, earnings, public safety, and a slower aging process

Aside from their main objectives, such studies create rich and integrated datasets to support improved child development for future generations. They are also good at capturing individuals who would not normally take part in research, as they rely on data collected routinely by healthcare and education professionals (but always anonymised).

However, such data-based methods have their challenges. Data often do not easily link together, may not provide enough information on key aspects of children’s lives such as home and social environments, and may not be consistently recorded using the same protocols. The RSE Education Committee has called for “more systematic, integrated, and robust data gathering to adequately capture the full breadth of learning and attainment, from formal qualifications to more qualitative markers of ‘personal development’”. Scotland has an important opportunity to redefine what it considers success by selecting parameters that are good predictors of later outcomes. For instance, children’s self-control skills (also called self-regulation/cognitive control) are one of the best predictors of academic achievement, risk-taking in adolescence, health, earnings, public safety, and a slower aging process³.

Lessons from Nordic models

There are some great examples from Denmark,⁴ Finland,⁵ Norway,⁶ and Sweden,⁷ where robust processes for data management and anonymisation on a national level provide an opportunity to do research at scale into human development. Such an approach can provide a platform for strategic forward thinking, investment in infrastructure and most importantly, collaboration between the wide range of education and health-related agencies who need to work together to improve outcomes for everyone.

Dr Bonnie Auyeung, Reader and Chancellor’s Fellow, The University of Edinburgh; RSE Education Committee member.

This article originally appeared in ReSourcE summer 2024.

References

¹ Analysis of linked administrative health data for Greater Glasgow & Clyde: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.25.23296070v1

² CHILDS study, The University of Edinburgh: https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/eave-ii/connected-projects/childs

³ A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1010076108

⁴ Danish National Birth Cohort: dnbc.dk

⁵ Lessons from a high-performing system: https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/the-success-of-finnish-schools-lessons-from-a-high-performing-system

⁶ Norwegian mother, father and child cohort study: fhi.no/moba-en

⁷ Health promotion in Swedish schools: school managers’ views: https://academic.oup.com/heapro/article/32/2/231/2950909