FAQs for mothers, fathers and carers
How do I take part now?
How was I chosen for this study?
What's involved?
Your child
The face-to-face interview
Cognitive exercises with your child
What if I only live with my child some of the time or my child lives at a different address to me?
What if I need help to complete the interview/survey?
Will anyone know what I say?
How will teachers and schools be involved?
Who is carrying out the study?
Who has approved this research?
What will happen to the information I give?
Do I have to take part?
What if I change my mind after the interview?
Where can I use my voucher?
Who do I contact if I still have questions, want to seek further information, or verify the research?
How do I take part now?
If you’ve been invited to this study, you should have received a letter and leaflets explaining how to take part. If you can’t find these, you can find them at the Documents for Participating Families page. Alternatively, get in touch with us at Freephone 0800 652 4568, or at FiveToTwelve@natcen.ac.uk.
How was I chosen for this study?
The study will look at the experiences of children and their families all over England. We are currently inviting selected families with children in year one at primary school. They will be part of a group that will represent all children in their particular age group. Most children have been identified through the National Pupil Database (NPD) which holds details of all pupils in English state education. Families with children who attend independent schools have been identified directly through their schools.
Around 8,200 families will take part.
What's involved?
We would like to conduct a face-to-face interview with the main parent of the child. In addition, we would like to ask your child to participate in three short cognitive exercises. Finally, we will ask up to two additional parents of the child to take part in an online questionnaire.
We would like to speak to you first when your child is around five to six years old. Five to Twelve is a longitudinal study, which means we will collect data over several years, and we would also like to speak to you again as your child gets older.
Taking part is completely voluntary. If you do take part, you can choose not to answer any question, and you can change your mind and withdraw from the study at any time.
We will get back in touch with you when it is time to take part again. Please let us know here if your contact details change.
Your Child
We’ve chosen your child at random using data from the Department for Education’s National Pupil Database, to make sure we get a truly representative picture of primary school children in the UK. Your child and your family’s views are extremely important to us: your child cannot be replaced by another child, as this would bias the results of the study.
The face-to-face interview
After you receive a letter inviting you to take part, a friendly and professional interviewer from the National Centre for Social Research will call at your address within a few weeks, to follow-up in person.
They will explain more about the study, answer any questions you have and arrange a time for you to take part. We understand that you may be busy, so we’ll organise the interview at a time that suits you.
Your interviewer will show you a photo ID card, so you know who they are. You and your child won’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to answer.
The interviewer will ask one parent/carer to take part in a face-to-face interview, which will last 40-45 minutes. Other parents will be asked to complete a 20-minute survey online (see below).
There’s no need to prepare for the interview. You don’t need any special knowledge, we just want to find out about your and your child’s lives and their experiences of school. Most people agree to be interviewed and enjoy taking part.
Topics covered in this interview include:
- Your child’s infancy, such as birth weight and health before the age of five
- Their experience of school
- Their health and any special educational needs
- The home environment and time spent together
- Use of technology in the household
- Parenting styles and relationships with other parents
- Your health
- Family finances, living situation and public services
Cognitive exercises with your child
In addition to the 45-minute face-to-face interview with one parent who lives with the child, the interviewer will ask you and your child’s permission to conduct a few short activities with your child. You can still take part in the study even if you don’t give permission for your child to do the exercises.
These exercises are to do with vocabulary, memory and making connections. These tasks will help researchers understand more about how development at this age interacts with experiences and support at school and elsewhere.
The parent will remain with the child throughout. The exercises will take 15-20 minutes in total. Ideally, they should be carried out in a quiet and well-lit room, away from distractions and disruptions. These tasks are designed to get slightly more difficult as they go on. They all end after a few minutes, and can be ended early if the child cannot answer the questions for any reason, or does not want to continue.
The child will be asked to complete a vocabulary task, where they are shown a series of pictures of everyday items and asked to name them. The activity gets slightly harder as it goes on.
The second task is a memory task that involves the interviewer reading out a pattern of numbers, then asking the child to repeat them, but backwards. The activity starts with two numbers at a time, and the number patterns get longer as the task continues.
The final task is a matching activity. Here the interviewer will show the child four pictures and ask the child to match a fifth picture to the one that is most similar. Once again, the pictures get slightly harder to match as the task goes on.
Our interviewers have been given special training to carry out these exercises and to give the child time to practise before they begin. The information and scores from the tasks are never looked at individually and only examined as a whole group. This means that the interviewer will not be able to give any individual feedback. The interviewer will explain more and be able to answer any questions you might have when they visit.
What if I only live with my child some of the time or my child lives at a different address to me?
As part of this study, we are really interested in understanding how all mothers, fathers and carers in children’s lives make a difference. So we are really keen to hear from all parents involved in a child’s life, even if the child doesn’t live with you or just lives with you some of the time. Up to three parents can take part for each child. We would like to ask Own Household Parents – that is, fathers and mothers of a child whose main address is somewhere else than the address held by the Department for Education – to complete a short web questionnaire. The survey will ask about your education and employment, health and wellbeing, behaviours and your family relationships.
Participating in the survey will not affect the contact you have with your child. No information about whether or not you participate, or any details of anything you say, will be passed to your child or their other parent.
What if I need help to complete the interview/survey?
If you need help to complete the interview or the survey, please speak to your interviewer. The mother/father/carer is welcome to have someone help translate with their interview if they need, although this should not be their child or anyone under age 14. It is not possible to have a translator for the child cognitive exercises.
Will anyone know what I say?
Each person will take part in the study separately and will not know about the responses given by anyone else in the study.
All answers will be kept confidential and anonymous, and shared only with researchers working on the study. It’s up to you if you want to talk to other people about what you tell us.
How will teachers and schools be involved?
If you, as the child’s mother/father/carer, give us your permission, we will also contact your child’s teacher to ask them some questions. This is so that we can ask them about the child’s experiences at school, which will help us get a more complete picture of their life and understand how school impacts on children’s experiences. You can still be part of the study without agreeing to your child’s teacher taking part.
Who is carrying out the study?
The study is being carried out by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), the largest independent social research organisation in Britain, commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE). We work in collaboration with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
Who has approved this research?
The study has been reviewed by an independent group of people called a Research Ethics Committee, to protect your safety, rights, wellbeing and dignity. This study has been given ethical approval by the NatCen Research Ethics Committee A (Reference no. P17183).
What will happen to the information I give?
Once we have collected all the answers from everyone who takes part, they will be looked at together as a group, anonymously. By this, we mean that there will be no names attached to the answers, and we will not know which person said what. We will then write up the findings into published reports. To make the answers you give us even more useful we will attach them to data held by your child’s school. Just like with the other information you give us; this will be done in such a way so that you can’t be identified in the data. There are more details in our privacy notice.
Do I have to take part?
No. We really hope that you will take part and give your views but if you don’t want to, that’s fine – just tell your interviewer. You can also stop the interview at any point. If there are any questions that you don't want to answer, or activities that you do not want to take part in, just let us know, and we won’t ask you why.
What if I change my mind after the interview?
If you change your mind after taking part in the interview or web survey, or if you no longer want your information to be processed, please get in touch with us as soon as possible using our contact details.
In these cases, it may be possible to remove individual responses. However, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), where your data is processed under Article 6(1)(e) “processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller”, requests to withdraw your answers at a later date (for example, months or years after the interview) will not be possible. Attempts at withdrawing your information later on would impair the analysis of the results in a robust and consistent way, and therefore reduce the functionality of the study.
Where can I use my voucher?
Your Love2Shop voucher can be spent shops such as Argos and TK Maxx. Enter your voucher code online at love2shop.co.uk.
Who do I contact if I still have questions, want to seek further information, or verify the research?
As the study progresses, we will keep in touch with study families and will send you updates about what we have found out so far.
The National Centre for Social Research are delivering the study and can answer any questions you may have about the research and your participation. You can contact them using our contact details.
To contact the Department for Education, you can call the main helpline on 0370 000 2288 (Mon-Fri, 9.30am-5pm) or submit your question online at the Gov.uk website. Please quote Five to Twelve study.