COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study: Wave 1, 2021-2022

The COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) is a longitudinal cohort study, a collaboration between the 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 UCL COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) webpage.

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. 

All young people who took part in Wave 1 (see SN 9000) were invited to the second Wave of the study, along with their parents (whether or not they took part in Wave 1).

Data collection in Wave 2 was carried out between October 2022 and April 2023 where young people and parents/guardians were first invited to a web survey. In addition to online reminders, some non-respondents were followed up via face-to-face visits or telephone calls over the winter and throughout spring. Online ‘mop-up’ fieldwork was also carried out to invite all nonrespondents into the survey one last time before the end of fieldwork.

Main topics

For young people, Wave 2 included:

• a household grid
• changes to current status since Wave 1
• qualifications studied towards
• early labour market experience
• residual disruption due to the pandemic
• university applications
• attitudes to education and future careers
• spare time/leisure activities
• homelessness
• health and wellbeing
• friends, peers and family support
• health-related behaviours.

For parents, Wave 2 included:

• demographics
• attitudes to education/education and career aspirations
• parenting, home learning, tuition and catch-up
• working status across the pandemic (since the last interview for parents also interviewed in Wave 1)
• parental tenure, HRP and occupation details
• parental education
• parental income
• grandparents
• COVID-19 history and vaccination
• parent health and wellbeing
• disadvantage.

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