Growing up in Scotland: a study following the lives of Scotland's children

Footnotes

1 Child Benefit Records were chosen because of the high levels of uptake among parents. Approximately 97% of those families eligible for Child Benefit are registered with the DWP.

2 Vocational qualifications include, among others ScotVec and BTec National and Higher National Certificates, SVQs and NVQs.

3 A blended family is a couple family containing two or more children, of whom at least one is the natural child of only one member of the couple, and at least one is the natural child of only the other member of the couple. The other type of blended family is where only one member of the couple has at least one previous child and one child is also the natural child of both couple members.

4 The terms 'primaparous' and 'multiparous' are used throughout this report to distinguish between mothers for whom the sample child was their first born, and mothers who had children prior to having the sample child.

5 The most commonly used classification of socio-economic status used on government surveys is the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification ( NS-SEC). For more details see the technical notes in Appendix A .

6 It should be noted that although this household measure of NS-SEC appears higher than both census results and MCS (Scotland) results, when broken down to individual 'mother' and 'father' classifications the data are very similar.

7 Note that the designation of 'couple' for two adults living together does not assume any legal marital bond between those two adults.

8 A description of this classification can be found in the technical notes in Appendix A .

9 See Scottish Executive (2006) Scottish Executive Urban/Rural Classification 2005-2006.

10 These figures match those obtained by the MCS in Scotland (47% attendance). In this context, it is worth noting that attendance rates recorded by the MCS were significantly higher in Scotland than in England (37%), Wales (34%) or Northern Ireland (35%).

11 This question ('Thinking about the first six weeks or so after ^ChildName was born, how well do you think that you and ^ChildName's mother/father, as a couple, dealt with ^ChildName's arrival?') was asked only in those cases where the respondent was the child's natural mother or father, and where the child's natural parents were together at the time of birth (either married, cohabiting or in a relationship), but not necessarily at the time of interview.

12 'Managing the relationship between the child and his/her siblings' was excluded from this analysis to allow an entire cross sample comparison.

13 Data from the Child Health Surveillance Programme: Pre-school ( CHSP- PS) system, which is collected by ISD Scotland, cover approximately 84% of Scotland's pre-school population. Further information on breastfeeding rates using this data is available at http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/1761.html.

14 A selection of six items of the Condon Maternal Attachment Questionnaire (Condon & Corkindale, 1998) as utilised by Millennium Cohort Study was used to assess parent-to-infant attachment from the original 19-item self-report questionnaire.

15 Every day or almost every day = 5, At least once a week = 4, At least once a month = 3, At least once every three months = 2, Less often than once every three months = 1, Never = 0.

16 Since the time of the data collection, the Childcare link service has been re-named. The new website is www.scottishchildcare.gov.uk

17 Note that the Scottish Health Survey sample represents all Scottish women aged over 16, an age range much wider than that included in the GUS sample.

18 In terms of weekly limits, men are advised to drink no more than 21 units of alcohol per week, and women no more than 14.

19 In terms of daily consumption, regular drinking of 4 or more units a day for men, or 3 or more units a day for women, is likely to result in increasing health risk and is not advised.

20 Local Authority has been used as a stratification variable during sampling, this means the distribution of the GUS sample by Local Authority will be representative of the distribution of Local Authorities in Scotland. However, the sample sizes are such that we would not recommend analysis by Local Authority. The small sample sizes would give misleading results.

21 If a very accurate estimate of the margin of error is required for a particular purpose, then expert help should be sought. The approximate formula shown above may need to be amended to allow for the sampling fraction and the effect of the weighting.