pdf [5.3MB] - Department of Families, Housing, Community Services

Box 2-1: LSAC research questions relating to FF, health and educationFamily functioningWhat are the impacts of family relationships, composition and dynamics on childoutcomes and how do these change over time?What can be detected of the impacts and influences of fathers on their children?How are child outcomes affected by the characteristics of their parents’ labourforce participation, their educational attainment and family economic status, andhow do these change over time?Do beliefs and expectations of children (parental, personal and community, inparticular the parents’ and child’s expectations of the child’s school success,workforce participation, family formation and parenting) impact on child outcomesand how do these change over time?How important are broad neighbourhood characteristics for child outcomes?Does their importance vary across childhood? How do family circumstancesinteract with neighbourhood characteristics to affect child outcome?How important are family and child social connections to child outcomes? Howdo these connections change over time and according to the child’s age? Doestheir importance vary across childhood?HealthWhat is the impact over time of early experience on health, including conditionsaffecting the child’s physical development?What is the impact on other aspects of health and other child outcomes of poormental health, including infant mental health and early conduct disorder? Howdoes the picture change over time?How do socioeconomic and socio-cultural factors contribute over time to childhealth outcomes?What are the patterns of children’s use of their time for activities such as outdooractivities, unstructured play, watching television, reading; and how do theserelate to child outcomes including family attachment, physical fitness level andobesity, social skills and effectiveness over time?EducationWhat early experiences support children’s emerging literacy and numeracy?What factors over the span of the early childhood period ensure a positive ‘fit’between child and school and promote a good start in learning literacy andnumeracy skills in the first years of primary education?Source: Sanson et al (2002)The age of the study cohorts by Wave 4 in 2010 of the data collection will be 6-7 years in theinfant group and 10-11 years in the child cohort. This database would therefore be useful indetermining the short to medium term impacts of FF on children in the family, although it iscurrently limited in its usefulness to determine long term productivity impacts throughcompletion of Year 12, further (tertiary) education, participation in the labour force andemployment. The same limitations apply to health and social impacts. Inferences fromLSAC would be able to inform some of the intermediate and transitional outcomes from FF30