Child Development and Education Research Partnership Project

Executive Summary

The NT Government has contributed $400,000 over the past four years as a founding partner of the SA NT Datalink consortium. This has enabled the development of the technical capacity to support research being conducted through the de-identified linkage of NT population datasets to conduct policy-relevant analyses that were not previously possible.

All data linkage research projects managed by SANT Datalinkrequire the approval of a NHMRC accredited ethics committee. The data linkage process ensures the strict separation of the data content from personal identification details.

The NT data-linkage demonstration study has now completed most of the lead up work required in the de-identification and linkage of selected data items from each of the first four administrative datasets being linked.
The SA NT Datalink Demonstration Study has established the feasibility of data-linkage analysis to make better use of existing NT administrative data. This has provided the foundation for the proposed ‘Project’ component of the NTG-Menzies CCDE Research Partnership.
The overall aim of the NTG-Menzies CCDE Research Partnership project is to build upon this experience to create a NT-specific study population based on de-identified linked data on NT-born children,spanning their mother’s first antenatal health care visit through to their educational outcomes in school year 9 covering the 1993-2006 birth cohorts.
The Partnership Project Objectives:
  1. Investigating and reporting the social, individual, health and family factors that influence achievement in AEDI (Australian Early Development Index) and NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests among Northern Territory children.
  1. Investigating the significant differences between the number of children in birth, school enrolment and school attendance cohorts.
  1. Investigating the child health, parental, family and community factors that relate to children’s vulnerability to child abuse and neglect and the longer-term developmental consequences of such vulnerability.
  1. Investigating the extent to which NT early childhood development data and its markers match and diverge from those in South Australia
Expected publication outputs
This projectwill result in the production of several peer reviewed journal publications and proposed monographs that will detail the findings of the data-linkage analysis of the perinatal, child health, AEDI, and family and community-level determinants of school attendance and NAPLAN results in the NT.
Why is thisproject important?
There is widespread scientific agreement that the early years of a child’s life are of critical importance in shaping longer-term outcomes in health, development, learning and wellbeing across the lifespan. It is acknowledged that children’s development is shaped by a complex interplay between individual biological factors and a range of social, economic and environmental factors.
For government policy to be better informed by evidence we need to improve our understanding of how various factors impact at the population level and for significant sub-populations. It is vital that the design, implementation and evaluation of these services is based on reliable evidence, and a systematic understanding of the complex interplay between individual, environmental and social forces shaping the lives of children in the NT population context. The de-identified linkage of administrative data from different NT sources enables research and policy questions being investigated in ways not previously possible.

Further information

Should you require more detailed information, please refer to the report Child Development and Education Research Partnership Project available at www INSERT LINK. This provides a detailed description of the ethics approval process, the data-linkage methodologyand datasets being linked, the study design, sample frame, analysis plan together with the timeframe for the production, reporting and publication of the project findings.

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