Adaptations to a cohort study in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: insights from Growing Up in Ireland.

Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is the national longitudinal study of children and young people in the Republic of Ireland and has followed two cohorts for over ten years to date: Cohort '98 who were recruited into the study at age nine years and Cohort '08, recruited at age nine months. The study aims to describe the lives of Irish children and young people in terms of their development, with a view to positively affecting policies and services available for them. Traditionally, data collection involved in-home visits from an interviewer who conducted face-to-face interviews, recorded physical measurements of study participants and administered cognitive assessments. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions, significant adaptations were required to these methods to ensure data collection for the pilot and main fieldwork for Cohort '08 at age 13 could continue to the expected timeline. Face-to-face interviews with participants were replaced with telephone and web-based modes, interviewer training was conducted online, online resources were made available for interviewers and participants and COVID-19 related items were added to questionnaires. In addition to the scheduled data collection, a special COVID-19 survey was also conducted on both GUI cohorts in December 2020 to explore the impact of the pandemic on participants' lives. This paper outlines the adaptations made to traditional data collection methods in GUI, highlighting the challenges that were met, but also the benefits of some changes that may be worth incorporating into future waves of GUI.

The Effect of Pandemic-Related Economic Disruption on Young Adolescents in Ireland.

The sudden health and economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic affords an opportunity to examine the impact of economic disruption to children and families. Any negative effects on the well-being of children are important to consider in relation to both short- and long-term outcomes. Using pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic waves of the longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland study, we examined whether the impact of economic disruption was equivalent for families who were (or were not) financially vulnerable pre-pandemic. We then investigated whether economic disruption was associated with a negative effect on the emotional well-being of 12-year-olds, and if there was evidence for such a negative effect being mediated through a lack of material resources or strain on family dynamics. Our results indicated that middle-income rather than lowest-income families experienced the most economic disruption, likely reflecting the sector-specific nature of business closures in the pandemic. Families who were financially vulnerable pre-pandemic were less likely to have had suitable resources for homeschooling. Both falls in income and strain in family relationships, such as arguing more with their parents, were associated with poorer scores on a measure of the child's emotional well-being. The emergency income support payment introduced at the start of the pandemic appeared to have a protective effect on the association between family income loss and child well-being, which has wider implications for policy on child poverty.