Children and young people in data

Mental health and wellbeing are significant for everyone, but there has been significant interest and attention given to the mental health of teenagers and young people in recent years. Various datasets can provide insight into this area, especially the various longitudinal studies such as the Millennium Cohort survey.

The Children’s Society recently developed a case study with our team looking at The Good Childhood report 2023. This edition of the annual report showed that while fortunately many children in the UK are happy with their lives, there is a small but not insignificant proportion who do not feel so positive about their life, or specific aspects of it. The Children’s Society have previously discussed their work in this Data Impact blog post from 2018.

The role of parents on mental health is one that researchers have been investigating. On the Data Impact blog, Ioannis Katsantonis discussed how parent-child interactions impact children’s mental health and prosocial development. Dr Liming Li looked at whether single mothers claiming welfare benefit benefits their children’s mental health.

The impact of technology on young people and children is an important area of research. The Millennium Cohort Survey has questions relating to technology and can help shed light on what teenagers spend their time doing. Professor Liz Twigg investigated the role of social media on young people’s mental health and there has been significant research in this space since then.

One of our Data Impact fellows, Naomi Miall, shared about here research looking at child Mental Health in the wake of COVID-19.

Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer looked at the relationship between perceived income inequality amongst friends and adolescent mental health and interpersonal difficulties.

For more information on other research on the area of mental health and wellbeing, see our theme page for Mental Health and wellbeing in data.

School and education are central to the lives of children in the UK. The transition into tertiary education is also a significant one for those who continue in their education. There are many datasets in the UK Data Service catalogue that play vital roles in investigating these topics.

The equality and equity of education is also an area of significance. Philip Nye from FFT Education Datalab explored how some schools are gaming the system through ‘off-rolling’. One of our Data Impact Fellows, Matteo Sandi, also discussed whether UK academies use exclusions to play the system.

Philly Ricketts described the concept of educational isolation, where she sought to identify the relationship between ‘place’, limited access to resources and educational outcomes.

In another geography/area-related piece of work focussing on education, Chris Playford discussed whether growing up by the sea influence progression to Higher Education in England.

Morag Henderson, Nikki Shure and Anna Adamecz-Volgyi spent several years researching whether being the first in a family to attend university is a good indicator of success. They described the aims of the project in an initial blog post and then presented their findings in 2022.

Andrew McNeil and Elizabeth Simon used the British Social Attitudes survey to look at the way studying in university decreases Euroscepticism over time.

Health and caring for sick loved ones can have a variety of effects on families, children and parents.

Over the years we have highlighted the role data plays in research focussing on unpaid carers. Becca Lacey shared research from the Eurocare team on how mental and physical health change around becoming an unpaid carer in the UK. Becca also shared about how she made use of data when looking at how sizeable an issue unpaid caring is for those juggling various responsibilities. The Health Foundation’s data analytics team discussed what happened to unpaid caring during Covid-19 as part of Carers’ week

Data can also play a significant role in looking at the health of children.

Researchers have looked at cancer from several different angles. Panos Demakakos investigated whether experiences of poor quality parenting in childhood are associated with cancer risk at older ages, Mary Kroll looked at whether affluent children at greater risk for leukaemia, and Richard McNally analysed the improved survival from teenage and young adult cancer in Northern England.

The role of childhood poverty and road pollution on children’s respiratory health, vitamin D insufficiency in children, energy drinks and exploring whether there’s a link between child intelligence and adult cardiovascular disease show the breadth of areas that data-enhanced research can investigate.

Families and parents have a significant impact on their children as they grow up and into adult life. Helen Norman shared about her research into the role of fathers and looking after children in this case study. In an accompanying blog post she reflected on her academic journey and discussed why she wanted to research this topic. Researchers from University College, London looked at whether parenting programmes reduce conduct disorder and its costs to society.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on young people. The COSMO study helps to show the unequal impacts of the pandemic, and the lead of this project Jake Anders discussed some initial findings from the first wave of this study.

Data available through the UK Data Service catalogue has also contributed to the UK Parliament inquiry into child poverty that took place in 2021. See our Poverty in Data theme for more details on how data is being used in this area.