Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) is the first wave of a planned longitudinal cohort study, a collaboration between UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), and the Sutton Trust. The overarching aim of COSMO is to provide a representative data resource to support research into how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the life chances of pupils with different characteristics, in terms of short-term effects on educational attainment, and long-term educational and career outcomes.The topics covered by COSMO include, but are not limited to, young people's education experiences during the pandemic, cancelled assessments and education and career aspirations. They have also been asked for consent for linking their survey data to their administrative data held by organisations such as the UK Department for Education (DfE). Linked data is planned to be made available to researchers through the ONS Secure Research Service.Young people who were in Year 11 in the 2020-2021 academic year were drawn as a clustered and stratified random sample from the National Pupil Database held by the DfE, as well as from a separate sample of independent schools from DfE's Get Information about Schools database. The parents/guardians of the sampled young people were also invited to take part in COSMO. Data from parents/guardians complement the data collected from young people.Data collection in Wave 1 was carried out between September 2021 and April 2022. Young people and parents/guardians were first invited to a web survey. In addition to receiving online reminders, some non-respondents were followed up via face-to-face visits over the winter and throughout spring.Further information about the study may be found on the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) webpage.Latest edition information:For the third edition (June 2023), the young people data and the parents data were updated (version 2 for both). These include data from the boost sample funded by the Sutton Trust, as well as some new variables to facilitate the analysis of updated data sets (e.g. weights). These updates are explained in the COSMO Wave 1 Data User Guide Version 2 which is available as part of the documentation, along with a new Technical Report, and supplementary appendices.
Main Topics:
For young people, the study covers: a household grid; current status; qualifications studied towards; education during the pandemic (on the basis of three main time periods: Lockdown 1: from April to July 2020, and Lockdown 3: from January to March 2021, and when most schools were open, September to December 2020); catch-up activities; cancelled assessments; education and career aspirations; extra-curricular activities pre- and post-pandemic; attitudes to education; health and wellbeing; friends, peers and family support; and health-related behaviours.For parents, the study covers demographics; attitudes to education; parenting, home learning, tuition and catch-up; working status across the pandemic; parental tenure, HRP and occupation details; parental education; parental income; covid history and vaccination; pandemic impact on family life; parent health and wellbeing; and disadvantage.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Self-administered questionnaire: Web-based (CAWI)
Face-to-face interview: Computer-assisted (CAPI/CAMI)
Self-administered questionnaire: Computer-assisted (CASI)
