The Cohort ’18 Growing Up in Hungary survey, launched by the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in January 2018, celebrated the successful completion of its second wave of data collection in November 2019. Shortly after phase one of the surveying of expecting mothers closed, the cohort babies were born, and their families were visited yet again (when the babies turned six months old) by the health visitors involved in the research. It is a great achievement, that almost all of the approximately 8,300 expecting mothers who participated in the first wave of the study agreed to continue their participation and to report on their child’s further development and the daily lives of their families.

How many are we?

At the beginning of the research, we selected a total of 619 health visitor districts. The health visitors visited and requested the participation of all expectant mothers belonging to their districts based on the expected date of their births. During the one year of the data collection among pregnant women, which started in January 2018, we worked with more than 700 health visitors, with the help of whom a total of 8287 expecting women joined the research and answered our first questionnaire. During the stage of examining six-month-old babies, most of them, precisely 7859 people, responded to our repeated inquiry. Furthermore, an additional 384 expectant mothers who had been initially asked by their health visitors to participate in the study, but for some reason were unable to respond to the pregnant questionnaire, have now joined. Thus, at the six-months-old research phase, we were able to collect data on the development of a total of 8365 children, including 243 twin babies.

How we move forwards?

The Cohort ‘18 research continues progression according to initial plans. Following the interviews conducted with the families of six-months-old’s, the next phase began in the fall of 2019, through the surveying the parents of the now one-and-a-half-year-old babies. After this, the next time families will be contacted in person will be in 2021, by the time the children will reach the age of three. While the aim and topic of our study remain the same, an important change is that at these stages we work with professional interviewers instead of health visitors, they, the employees of Inspira Kft., visit the families included in the research. It also comes as a novelty that during the 18-months period, we contact the fathers separately through phone, so that they can also report on their experiences of childbearing. We will also contact mothers by phone after their child turns two years old, inquiring about their working experiences as mothers with young children and also ask them about their future plans.