1.5 Criteria for Questions / Scales

Suggestions for new topics are evaluated according to a number of criteria. Four of

these are considered ‘core criteria’ and are assigned extra weighting:

•Captures a key domain (i.e., health, early learning and care, relationships and socio-emotional well-being, family context)

•Is policy-relevant

•Is appropriate for the age/stage of the study child

•Is not readily available from another source

For continuing topics (i.e., previously used with Cohort 24 at 9 months or Cohort 08

at 3 years), there was an additional core criterion of ‘longitudinal and/or cross-cohort

consistency’. As this criterion will not, as a rule, apply to new topics these were

scored according to a different fifth criterion of ‘strong support’ instead. This means

that both new and continuing topics were scored out of a maximum of 10 on core

criteria (5 x 2 points).

In addition, there were an additional six ‘supporting criteria’ used to evaluate both

new and continuing topics. These were either 1 or 0 each, giving a maximum of six

additional points on the scoring table. The supporting criteria were:

•Reflects a dynamic, rather than static, variable

•Is feasible to capture in a home-based survey, and is not overly burdensome for respondents

•Has scope for international comparability

•Captures diversity in the population of interest

•Has sufficient prevalence and or variance to allow for later analysis

•Is likely to be engaging to respondents as a topic

The scoring for each topic on the core criteria is presented in tabular format within

each of the main domain chapters.

1.6 Lessons from Comparable Studies