About this Report

The main purpose of this report is to set out the policy and research needs that can

be addressed by the second wave of Growing Up in Ireland’s Cohort 24 at age 3 as

identified by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth

(DCEDIY). The Department is mindful that the study is a key national resource on a

new generation of children and aims to meet as many cross-Government data needs

as is feasible. However, there is a limit on the amount of time and information

respondents can reasonably be expected to contribute so judgments between

different topics have to be made.

To this end, the team at DCEDIY has consulted widely with other studies; academic,

NGO and policy-maker stakeholders; and parents and children themselves. It has also

drawn extensively from previous waves of the Growing Up in Ireland study, as the

capacity for longitudinal and cross-cohort comparisons is a key element of the study’s

design. This wide range of potential source material has been evaluated and

culminates in a set of recommendations from DCEDIY to the Central Statistics Office

(CSO) who will be designing the instrumentation and collecting the data. Final

decisions on content and methodology rest with the CSO.

1.1Background