Closing the first wave

The first wave of our research has been successfully completed!

The Cohort ’18 Growing Up in Hungary survey, launched by the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in January 2018, successfully completed its first phase of the study in May 2019, by surveying pregnant mothers living in Hungary. During the data collection, which lasted for more than a year, health visitors visited approx. 8,300 expecting mothers. They asked them about their experiences of having children, their plans and their living conditions.  The families initially included in our sample are revisited by the health visitors when the babies reach the six months age, in order to ask the mothers about their experiences with childbirth, childcare and, of course, most importantly about the baby. In the later stages of the research, the questionnaires, taken with mothers during the pregnancy and then when their babies were six months old, are followed by further personal inquiries at the ages of one and a half-years and three-years of the given children. Here, it is no longer health visitors but professional interviewers who will collect the mothers’ answers. We also involve the fathers in the inquiries of their children’s development, starting from the age of one and a half-year of the child. We will contact them by phone so that they can share their own experiences of having a child.

The various stages of the research are presented in our timeline:

Who are the cohort babies?

This is how we named the children included in our research as part of the sample of the Growing Up in Hungary. They are the babies whose births were expected in their given health visitor districts between the periods of April 1, 2018, and April 30, 2019. The first data collections were made with their expecting mothers during the seventh month of pregnancy, and later we revisit their families to be able to track their progress. Since the sample of cohort babies represents all children (in their age group) within the country quite well, we can say that by examining this group we can get an accurate picture of what it is like to grow up in Hungary today.

The Cohort ’18 research sample covers the following areas of the country:

How many are we?

At the beginning of the research, we selected a total of 619 territorial health visitor districts, where the health visitors visited and requested the participation of all expecting mothers belonging to the district based on the expected date of their birth. The data collection involving pregnant mothers, which started in January 2018, lasted for more than a year. During this time, we worked with a total of 648 health visitors, as we also had to deal with the tracking of babies due to the relocation of families before their babies reached the age of six months, through the involvement of additional health visitors.

At the start of the study, we initially planned to monitor the development of every tenth baby born during this one-year study period. Since approx. 90,000 children are born in Hungary each year, we calculated with a starting sample of 9,000, depending on the willingness of mothers to participate in the surveys. Based on the questionnaires collected to date, we can say that our plans so far have been successfully implemented, as the number of expecting women participating in the research has reached approx. 8,300. The number of cohort babies will continue to increase, as some pregnant mothers, 126 to be precise, were expecting twin babies and others, who, although were part of the initial sample, were not interviewed during pregnancy, but will also be included after birth, when their babies will reach the age of six months.

The number of expecting women participating in the study, vary significantly from health visitor district to district, depending on how many expected babies were born during the study period, and also on how many of the expectant mothers chose to participate in the research. In most districts, the health visitors managed to talk to up to 30 pregnant women, but there were also districts from which more than 40 or even 50 pregnant women joined the research.

How we move forward?

The second wave of the Cohort ‘18 research began in August 2018 with a visit to families raising their now six-months-old children; this phase will last until the fall of 2019. As of May 2019, out of previously responding pregnant women, 4,500 mothers raising a six-month-old child were available for the study. The next wave of data collection, complemented by a survey conducted with father through telephone, will take place when the babies reach one-and-a -half-years of age. This phase will then be followed by a repeated questionnaire survey at the age of three, and an additional telephone survey to explore maternal employment, which is planned to take place at the end of the GYED (childcare allowance) period.

Thank you very much to all our respondents for their trust!