Kids' Life and Times

Welcome to the adults’ section of the Kids’ Life and Times survey website

What is the Kids’ Life and Times survey?

The Kids’ Life and Times survey was established in 2008 and is an annual survey of all P7 children in Northern Ireland, covering what they think about school and other things that are important to children today. The purpose of the survey is to give children a voice in issues that affect them and to give relevant organisations feedback on the views of children. The survey is anonymous so no individual child can be identified.

The surveys take place every year, and funders have included the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, . Psychology Research Institute (University of Ulster), Department of Education for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, and the Improving Children's Lives initiative (Queen's University Belfast).

Each year, the children taking part in KLT are asked to suggest topics for inclusion in the following year's survey and some of their suggestions are incorporated into the questionnaire. The questions asked in the surveys cover issues that are important to children and have included:

  • Bullying at school;
  • The transfer test;
  • Use of technology;
  • Attitudes to after school care;
  • Children’s feelings about themselves and their lives.

Each child is asked for his/her consent at the start of the questionnaire and they do not have to do the survey if they do not want to.

View the call for expressions of interest for the 2016 KLT survey here

How is the information used?

The results of the surveys are used in a number of ways, including being published on the web, in reports, disseminated to and used by children's organisations, used for educational training purposes and published in academic journals. The tables of results from the surveys as well as the datasets in SPSS format are available on the Kids' Life and Times website. We ensure that anonymity is guaranteed and that information is not used in a way that would identify a school, a child or a family.

To access publications using KLT data, please click here.

To access the results comics 'What kids think' or to see a sample of the animated questionnaire please click on the links below.

link to sample survey
Example of Survey

link to final results
Results Comics

characters by kind permission of  Link to Bangonthedoor website

Disclaimer:© ARK 2008 Last Updated on Monday, 29-Feb-2016 15:11