Case Study: Gloucestershire Pupil Online Survey

In 2006, Foster and Brown Research worked in partnership with Gloucestershire County Council and the Health Community, to find out what children and young people between the ages of 8 and 16 really thought about a range of health-related issues using an online questionnaire.

The aim of this study was to provide essential information for individual schools and for the County as a whole in order to address needs and target resources more effectively for the benefit of the young people in the County.

We have recently updated the surveys and repeated the exercise in 2008 and we now have a database of over 30,000 responses from pupils. This data will provide important information to judge whether outcomes really are improving for children and young people in the future.

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Targetting Schools

What makes the Gloucestershire survey unique is:

1. the huge number of respondents from over 85% of schools (primary and secondary phases, including special schools and PRUs)
2. the online results facility (using Lodeseeker™) which allows schools to interrogate their own data and compare it the the rest of the County

Schools were approached via the Healthy Schools Team - all administration was carried out at County level, and we assisted by providing username/passwords, reporting on progress by checking school logins throughout the survey period, talking to individual schools if there were any technical issues (there weren't many) and attending steering committee meetings.

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The survey questions were based on the 5 outcomes for Every Child Matters:

1. Be healthy
2. Stay safe
3. Enjoy and achieve
4. Make a positive contribution
5. Achieve economic well-being

Based on these 5 outcomes, the survey comprises 6 sections:

1. Healthy Eating
2. Physical Activity
3. Alcohol, Substances and Smoking
4. Citizenship/Student Participation/Finance
5. Safety
6. Relationships

There are 2 versions of the survey, one for primary (or below YearGroup 7) and one for secondary (or above YearGroup 7).

The survey takes about 20 minutes to complete

The youngest Year Groups are very comfortable with the technology, although they do need more help with interpreting the questions, as you would expect

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Using the results

The data has been used in many ways, including:

• Schools have used the data for their own self-evaluation, to identify future needs and support school improvement and in lessons as a valuable and engaging teaching aid.
• The data has helped to inform Gloucestershire’s county-wide partnership’s priorities, as outlined in the Children and Young people’s plan.
• Schools have been supported to address particular issues highlighted in the 2006 report, such as healthy eating, alcohol awareness and emotional health.
• Resources have been targeted at areas of need such as domestic violence and anti-bullying.
• The data has helped with the Healthy schools team and various other partners within the County Council and the joint primary health care trust to focus on improving integrated working across agencies.

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Accessing Results

We provide dynamic, hosted online reporting using our Lodeseeker™ technology which allows full interrogation of results as part of our reporting services. This gives many advantages, including:

• Schools have use of the data for their own self-evaluation, to identify future needs and support school improvement. The site can also be used in lessons as a valuable and engaging teaching aid.
• The data is available through a secure login and there are several access levels, depending on who is logging on. For example, schools can see their own results compared to the county total for their phase (as default - ie a secondary school will compare with the secondary schools in the county, a primary school with primary schools - although there is provision to compare all results if desired).
• The extensive filtering and tabulation facilities mean that individuals can research the data for themselves without having to go through a third party.
• The results are hosted by us via a licensing agreement - the data is yours, but we put it onto the internet for you - that means any technical problems or data requests come to us directly.

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Brochure: Online Pupil Survey 2006 - Gloucestershire CYPSP. A download is available on this site.

Already we have addressed conferences and produced posters in collaboration with Gloucestershire PCT and LEA:

• Poster (pdf) presented at the The Third European Conference on Sensory and Consumer Research : A Sense of Innovation University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany • 7-10 September 2008
• "Young Peoples Perception of School dinners" - Poster (pdf) at the British Food and Drink group meeting and Food Choices Conference - Birmingham, April 2006
• Paper:An e-survey approach to obtaining baseline information for "Every Child Matters" presented with Dr Ruth Wain (deputy direction for joint NHS Primary Health Care Trusts in Gloucestershire) for the Faculty of Public Health (Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom) in Glasgow June 2006.
• Paper presented ( see abstract details (pdf)) at "A Sense of Diversity - Second European Conference on Sensory Consumer Science of Food and Beverages" in The Hague, 26 - 29 September 2006.

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