Schooling, childhood poverty and international development: choices and challenges in a longitudinal study

Abstract

Due to the rarity of longitudinal data, evidence on the benefits of education across the life-course is relatively sparse in developing countries. Young Lives is the only comparative dual-cohort study to combine data collection using mixed-methods at child, household, school and community levels, following 12,000 children in two cohorts across four countries since 2002. This article outlines the conceptual and analytical framework and the key methodological features of the Young Lives study, and the unique potential of the data for analysis of educational trajectories, and of the influences that shape them. It discusses the challenges associated with a crosscountry interdisciplinary study of children, their families and schools; including epistemological, logistical and ethical challenges; and examines how these were addressed. These include logistical, epistemological and ethical challenges of ensuring the integrity of the panel data and cohort, maintaining an appropriate degree of consistency across countries in terms of design and measurement, without compromising policy relevance at the national level, and balancing the sometimes competing demands for cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence.

Equalising opportunity? School quality and home disadvantage in Vietnam

“…Full details of the Young lives sampling strategy and survey design are available inBoyden and James (2014) in this volume.…”

Long‐run effects of teachers in developing countries

“…The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test is essentially the same test at each round, but as children grow older, they reach a later stage on this test. 2 More details on the tests for Rounds 1-3 are available in Boyden and James (2014).…”

“…In both countries, a sentinel‐site sampling design is employed, comprising 20 purposively selected sites chosen to represent national diversity, but with a pro‐poor bias. At the site level, children were selected randomly in 2001 to be representative of the birth cohort in each site (see Boyden & James, 2014, for full details). The sites in Ethiopia are located in five regions; Addis Ababa, Amhara, Oromiya, Tigray, and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNP).…”

After access: Divergent learning profiles in Vietnam and India

“…Boyden and James (2014) provide an overview of the data. These children were randomly sampled from within 20 ''sentinel sites'' purposively selected to represent the diversity of each country, though they are not statistically representative at the national level.…”