Call for Young Lives Data Research Proposals. Proposal deadline 30 December 2008.

Suitable for University of Oxford DPhil, MPhil and MSc students in  Development Studies, Economics and other disciplines, looking for data and topics for papers and dissertations.

A new longitudinal data set covering 4 developing countries is now available, collected as part of the Oxford-based research group, Young Lives, a collaborative research project with partners in the UK and the 4 study countries. The quantitative research is led by Professor Stefan Dercon (Oxford), with a qualitative sub-study led by Professor Martin Woodhead of the Open University. The research group is seeking to commission a number of papers from students or other researchers based at Oxford.

Young Lives is an innovative long-term research project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four developing countries. Our aim is to improve understanding of the causes and consequences of childhood poverty, examine how policies affect children’s well-being, and inform the development and implementation of future policies and practices that will reduce childhood poverty.

To this end we are tracking the development of 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam through quantitative and qualitative research over a 15-year period. Since 2002, we have been following two groups of children: 2000 children in each country who were aged between 6 months and 17 months in 2002, and 1000 children in each country aged between 7.5 years old and 8.5 years old in 2002. In 2005, after a management review process, the project was moved to Oxford, under the directorship of Dr Jo Boyden (Department of International Development) to rethink and restart its future. In 2007, a new round of data collection was completed, resulting in a two-round data set on these children. Quantitative data has been collected on parents/carers and children (covering a broad range of data on incomes, activities, assets, health, education, subjective well-being and psychosocial health), and recently a qualitative sub-study has been initiated, looking particularly at the key transitions facing children (for example as they start school or work) and children’s own perceptions of poverty, well-being, risk and resilience. All children in the sample are being carefully tracked, resulting in an attrition rate of 0.5 per cent per year on average, probably the lowest attrition rate in any panel survey of this scale ever.

Currently, our in-country data managers and researchers are in the process of checking, cleaning and documenting the data ready for public archiving in late 2008 and public use around March 2009. However, we wish to release the data in January 2009 to a selected number of researchers, primarily based in Oxford and undertaking graduate studies. In particular, we welcome specific proposals from individuals or small groups of researchers on any theme using one of the quantitative country data sets, providing the issue is not already being investigated for the country of interest in one of our working papers (please see attached list of current working papers).

We are inviting students to submit proposals for papers that could become part of their course work requirements in any relevant discipline, for example as extended essays for the MSc in Economics for Development, MPhil theses, or DPhil chapters, or just a research paper. Young Lives commits to offer the data, feedback on the initial proposal, and access to any basic materials helpful for successful completion of the work. We regret Young Lives cannot offer supervision for students drafting papers, but we will organise at least one research seminar during which drafts could be presented for feedback. Students hoping to use the data for their course requirements are strongly advised to raise this with their respective supervisors.

In terms of themes, we would welcome any research that exploits the data set. The data contain a broad set of variables, on different well-being outcomes (health, education and cognitive achievement, subjective well-being, psychosocial well-being, material poverty), including some of these based on child-level interviews, as well as detailed background data on the families as in standard household level surveys (for example, including assets, activities, consumption, income, migration, attitudes, perceptions, etc.). As the project started life with a much shorter and therefore more limited instrument, some of these data are only available in the form of a cross-section from 2007. Note that at this stage we will only accept proposals covering one country panel data set per proposal. Cross-country comparisons are strongly discouraged. While not a requirement, proposals that aim to focus on themes linked to the qualitative sub-study, and that may lead in due course to integrated papers in terms of quantitative-qualitative methods (possibly with members of the qualitative research team) are particularly welcome. We also welcome work especially, but by no means exclusively, on Vietnam. Students may submit multiple proposals, including in collaboration with others.

The following materials useful for the preparation of the proposal are available on the Young Lives website (http://www.younglives.org.uk/research-methodology-data):

• Questionnaires Round 1

• Questionnaires Round 2 (note: these are vastly expanded on Round 1)

• Community questionnaires Round 2

• Survey description documents (e.g. Fieldworker’s Manual).

• List of working papers that are currently being produced

If a proposal is accepted, the individual or team will be contracted to deliver a first draft by 15 August 2009. An initial payment of £1000 (gross) will be made on submission of the first draft provided the paper satisfies the basic quality thresholds befitting a graduate student at Oxford.  The paper will then be sent out for peer review and the author(s) will be asked to address the comments and resubmit the paper to Young Lives by 30 September 2009.  A further payment of £1000 (gross) will be made on completion, again, provided the paper satisfies the basic quality thresholds befitting a graduate student at Oxford. Successful applicants will be required to follow the Young Lives ethical guidelines (approved by CUREC) and to use the Young Lives publication guidelines for their paper (to be provided on acceptance of proposals). We should be able to fund a substantial number of high quality proposals.

Each proposal should contain the following details:
1.    Name(s) of the researchers involved, contact addresses and e-mails

2.    Degree course or affiliation and name of supervisor

3.    Research question and 150-word abstract of the proposed paper

4.    Detailed proposal (max 2 pages) including:

a.    Brief literature review and relevant precedents in research

b.    Precise statement of the research question

c.    How the question will be answered using the data (empirical methodology)

d.    Any relevant statistical problems, including possible endogeneities, identification, etc.

5.    Statement on whether the intention is to use the paper for the degree course, whether the supervisor is aware of this proposal and plan, and the extent of supervision that can be expected.

For reference, current Young Lives working papers using Young Lives quantitative survey data as at 24 October 2008 - as background information for decisions about potential future paper proposals.

Click here to download a list of authors and paper titles (PDF file 30 KB).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS: 5pm on 30 December 2008, by e-mail to younglives@younglives.org.uk

Decisions will be communicated to applicants by 10 January 2009. Some approvals may be conditional upon requests for further improvements and changes. Applications are accepted on the condition that the data can only be used for the purpose described in the proposal which will constitute part of the contract.

Please note: Phase 4 of the Young Lives project (April 2009 - March 2017) has been put out to tender by DFID.  This Call will depend on the University of Oxford winning this tender. Whilst we are confident we will win, DFID will only announce it’s decision on late December 2008.  We will display the outcome of the tender process on the Young Lives website as soon as the decision is announced.