Series details: CRDA/33

This data provides descriptive information on the nature and extent of children's difficulties on starting infant school, and the extent to which these difficulties were affected by factors concerned with the organisation of the school intake, such as the age at which children started, the time of year when they started, and the size of the class which they joined. A subsample of the original entrants was followed up 18 months later to obtain some idea of how long their difficulties persisted. Difficulties were assessed by a 13 item rating scale covering all aspects of the child's behaviour. This scale was completed for each child individually by the child's teacher.

This dataset comes under the auspices of the Department of Health and Social Security which existed from 1968 to 1988. The principal investigators were Martin Hughes and G. Pinkerton from the Thomas Coram Research Unit within the Institute of Education, University of London. The Thomas Coram Research Unit is a multidisciplinary research unit within the Institute of Education and a designated research unit of the Department of Health.

The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School dataset has information relating to settling, cooperation, relation with teacher, concentration, use of play materials, self-reliance, verbalisation, ability to follow instructions, ability to cope with personal needs, sociability, physical coordination, fine motor control, and general difficulty. Other information covers age on entry and sex of child.

No accruals expected.

The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School dataset and related dataset documentation are public records under the Public Records Acts 1958 and 1967. The Public Record Office has assigned this dataset the class reference BN 94.

The data in the Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School is open.

The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School and related dataset documentation are subject to Crown Copyright.

The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School dataset is not subject to registration under the Data Protection Act.

The language of the materials is English.

Documents relating to the Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School dataset have been transferred to NDAD. See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue.

A copy of the dataset is also held at the Data Archive at the University of Essex where it has been given the Study reference number 1514.

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The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School survey consists of one dataset containing three tables. Data was originally recorded on three separate decks of cards. These had been converted into digital format, and were transferred to NDAD as three separate data files in SPSS format, corresponding to the original decks of cards.

Further details of the file structure of the dataset are contained in the catalogues of individual datasets: see Links to dataset catalogues.

The Children's Difficulties on Starting Infant School dataset is closed in that once the data was entered they were archived and not subsequently overwritten by other data.

The data was captured by means of three separate questionnaires, which were completed by the children's teachers. The data for each child was originally recorded on a card, with three separate decks of cards being created, one for each questionnaire. It is not known what methods were used to validate the data originally, although totals of each coded response to each question are shown in the documentation, see the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/33/DD/2. It is not known at what stage the data was transferred to SPSS format, or whether any other formats of application software were involved in the validation or use of this data.

Details of the content and transformation validation checks performed by NDAD on the Reasons for Retirement dataset are contained in the catalogues of individual datasets: see Links to dataset catalogues.

Dataset catalogues provide more detailed information about individual datasets, and are currently available for the following dataset(s):