Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Young Life and Times Survey (YLT) originally began as a companion survey to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (NILT) series. It surveyed young people aged 12-17 living in the households of adults interviewed for NILT, and YLT ran alongside it from 1998-2000. Following an evaluation in 2001, the YLT series recommenced in 2003 (see SN 4826) using a completely different methodology and independent of the adult NILT. This new YLT survey uses Child Benefit records as a sampling frame.

The aims of the YLT series are to:

• monitor public attitudes towards social policy and political issues in Northern Ireland;
• provide a time series on attitudes to key social policy areas;
• facilitate academic social policy analysis; provide a freely available resource on public attitudes for the wider community of users in Northern Ireland;
• give a voice to young people.

An open access time-series teaching dataset has been created from the 2003-2012 YLTs - see SN 7548.

The Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) survey of P7 children (10-11 year olds) is also part of the same suite of surveys as YLT and NILT.

Further information about the YLT, including publications, may be found on the Access Research Knowledge (ARK) YLT webpages.

In 2013, all 16-year-olds who celebrated their 16th birthday in February and March of the survey year were invited to take part.


Main Topics:

The 2013 survey covered the following topics:

• Attitudes to ethnic minority groups - funded by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM)
• Community relations - funded by OFMDFM
• Mental health and self-harm - funded by OFMDFM
• Financial wellbeing, funded by Queen's University Belfast
• family
• rights
• background information