Tackling child poverty delivery plan: fourth year progress report 2021-2022 - focus report on households with mothers aged 25 or under

Annex A: Research Methods

The findings presented in this paper are based on a mixed-methods research project, consisting of:

• updates on statistics for the child poverty targets and indicators of the measurement framework
• a rapid evidence review to uncover specific challenges and facilitators for families with mothers aged under 25 in poverty
• qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 15 mothers aged 25 or under living on a low income.

A Research Advisory Group was established for the project. A mix of Scottish Government teams and external organisations were represented on the Group. The remit of the Group was to provide oversight, advice, challenge and feedback and contribute to quality assurance. After one initial virtual meeting, the Group mainly contributed via email. The Group fed into aspects of the project including:

• overall research design, scope and criteria for success
• ethics
• evidence review
• recruitment of participants
• emerging findings
• interview guides
• research outputs

The rapid evidence review was conducted first, to establish what we already knew about this priority group, including the causes of a higher poverty rate and barriers families with a mother under 25 face to reducing their living costs and increasing income from employment and social security. The search of evidence covered a wide range of sources and included reviewing online databases, existing Scottish Government research and identifying and searching stakeholder websites for relevant empirical evidence to include in the review. Searches were carried out using keywords to capture the range of poverty drivers (including poverty, low income, employment, work, social security, benefits, education, training, skill, cost, transport, childcare and young people, young mothers, young parents and parents). The searches were carried out separately across the different sources but then cross-referenced against each other to identify areas of overlap and cross-cutting themes. Due to the limited amount of evidence available for young mothers around some of the poverty drivers, evidence from the past 15 years was reviewed, although findings from the past 5-8 years was prioritised in analysis when available.

The key findings from the evidence review were used to inform an interview guide, designed both to further explore key barriers identified for this group and to fill some of the key gaps in evidence that were identified. These evidence gaps included:

• Factors contributing to higher rates of in-work poverty for mothers under 25.
• Whether there are any additional key barriers to education and employment for mothers under 25, beyond childcare, transport and differential treatment. For example, around mental health and wellbeing, lack of confidence and experience.
• Specific barriers faced by mothers under 25 with costs of living.
• More detailed information on what would help mothers in this group and what they want to see change.

We spoke to 15 mothers who were 25 or under. Although the priority group is 'families with a mother under 25', we also included mothers who were 25 at the time of interview.

Participants were mainly recruited via partner organisations who shared information about the research with parents they work with. Participants came to us via organisations including Early Years Scotland, Family Nurse Partnership (Tayside), One Parent Families Scotland and the Scottish Childminding Association. Interviews were conducted over the telephone or video call, between 12 May and 1 June 2022. Participants received a £25 shopping e-voucher after speaking to us as a thank you for giving us their time and sharing their lived experiences and views.

Our recruitment routes mean that we mainly captured parents who were already engaged with support services. This will be reflected in our data. This may have meant that some of the parents we spoke to were more likely to be experiencing particular issues, with which they were receiving support from these organisations. We are perhaps less likely to have captured the views of parents who are not engaged with support services.

We allowed people to self-identify as parents living on a low income, through stating upfront in our recruitment and information materials and that this was who we were interested in speaking to. The data and analysis therefore reflect a range of experiences from parents living in relative or severe poverty, to those living on a low income.

The mothers we spoke to included 8 lone parents, 8 mothers from a family where someone was disabled, 1 minority ethnic mother, and 1 mother who had 3 or more children. Lone parents are parents who do not currently live with another adult who they are in a relationship with. Some of the mothers we spoke to had a partner who they were not living with when we spoke to them. Most of the mothers we spoke to live in either a town or city, one respondent came from a rural area.

Of the mothers we spoke to, 6 were under 20 years old and 9 were aged 20-25. All of those aged under 20, and more than half of those aged 20-25, either were currently, or had been, part of the Family Nurse Partnership programme. Note that in Tayside, the programme was expanded to include under 25s.

These qualitative, semi-structured interviews allowed us to explore complex areas and gain an in-depth understanding of our participants' experiences, views, choices and behaviours. However, this was a small piece of research and findings cannot be generalised to the wider population. Findings from these interviews are integrated throughout the report, including anonymised quotes. Notes were taken during interviews but they were not audio or video recorded, therefore quotes are not necessarily verbatim.