Technical Report - Donegal Traveller's Project

All Ireland Traveller Health StudyThe NLSC/GUI study has contributed some of the most recent data on child health indicators forcomparison with AITHS. NLSC/GUI is a large, prospective cohort study which to date has gatheredbaseline data on two subgroups: 9-month old infants and 9-year-old children. For this study, thedata relating to the 9-year-old (n=8,570) were compared with the 9-year-old in AITHS, with specificcomparisons being made with the NLSC/GUI children in SC 5-6, or to those in the lowest quintile offamily income. Data were collected both from the parents, and from the children themselves (in thecase of the 9-year-old). Where relevant in this paper, it is clarified whether the data were by child orparent-report. Data tables have kindly been provided by Professor James Williams of the Economic andSocial Research Institute (ESRI), and other data has been gathered from the NLSC main report (Williamset al., 2009).The Continuous Household Survey is a yearly survey carried out by the Northern Ireland Statistics andResearch Agency (NISRA). It samples 1% of the NI households, and gathers information on a numberof household factors: population, housing, employment, health and education. Data is available byhousehold income and by employment skill set of the household. In this document, where specificcomparisons are made between the NI data and the AITHS data, the default comparison is between theAITHS data and the general Continuous Household Survey data. In cases where the comparisons aremade with the NI data relating to semi skilled or unskilled workers only (comparable with the CSO SC5-6 grouping), this is specified.Analysis StrategyAll publications of the most significant recent population surveys (Kelleher et al., 2003; Morgan et al.,2007; Williams et al., 2009; O’Mahony et al., 2007; INSIGHT ’07 (2008), Nic Gabhann et al., 2007; Kelly etal., 2009; Krieger et al., 2005) were accessed and data were abstracted. To access data specific to eitherthe medical card holders or the SC 5-6 groups of the general population, raw data was also requiredfrom a number of studies. Raw data files were accessed for the Lifeways study, INSIGHT ‘07 and theSLAN 2002 and 2007 studies. In the case of the latter 3 studies, the data was received through theISSDA. Investigators from the HBSC, NLSC/GUI and SLAN 2007 studies kindly made either raw dataor study-specific tables available for comparison, and we acknowledge their assistance. Further datarelating to the general population in Northern Ireland were obtained from both the NI ContinuousHousehold Survey (2008-2009) and the 2005 Infant Feeding Survey (Bolling et al., 2007). We specificallyrefer to the work of Professor Nancy Krieger in Harvard School of Public Health in Boston because sheis a world authority on the relative contribution of race, ethnicity and minority community affiliation tohealth, an under–researched but relevant topic for Traveller health. Frequencies are presented as validpercentages in all cases. All data are presented as descriptive statistics. Where possible, tabulationswere performed by sex and by age group, in keeping with the presentation of the AITHS data. Becauseof the sample size and the large number of variables for consideration, no formal statistical testing ofhypotheses was undertaken as part of this comparative description.66