Our research
The NSW-CDS is intended to provide much needed information to improve the mental health and wellbeing of Australian children and adolescents.
We aim to provide comprehensive information about the way that early experiences in life influence later adolescent and adult mental and physical health, education, social, and justice outcomes. We work closely with our government partners to provide information that can be used to develop new policies and community-based programs that support the healthy development of Australian children and young people, and particularly those exposed to childhood adversity, to improve their mental health and well-being and as they transition to adulthood.
Through successive waves of record linkage, we bring together information on physical and mental health, education, child protection and criminal justice system contacts for children in the cohort, as well as their parents; these linked data are made available to the researchers without any identifying information (i.e., there are no names or identity details provided to the researchers, so that none of the participants in the study can be identified by the research team under any circumstances).
Who is the NSW-CDS cohort
The NSW-CDS child cohort is defined on the basis of assessment with the Australian Early Development Census at school entry in 2009 (child age 5-6 years) and/or assessment with the self-report Middle Childhood Survey in 2015 (child age 11-12 years), which together captured more than 91,000 children growing up in New South Wales.
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The first record linkage (wave 1) for the NSW-CDS provided information about the EARLY childhood years (from birth to 5 years) for a population cohort of children defined by their assessment with the Australian Early Development Census as they started school in 2009 (aged 5-6 years). The record linkage brought together information about physical and mental health, education, child protection and criminal justice system contacts, for the children and their parents, while protecting the anonymity of all people involved. This linkage was conducted during 2013-2014. See our Wave 1 cohort profile paper for more information.
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The second record linkage (wave 2) was conducted in 2016, to provide information about the same cohort of children throughout their MIDDLE years of development, with data available from birth to 12-13 years of age; this linkage also integrated some new children who completed the Middle Childhood Survey while in Year 6 at a NSW primary school 2015 (aged 11-12 years; i.e., children who had moved into the state of NSW but were not present at school entry). The Middle Childhood Survey is a unique aspect of the NSW-CDS which supplements routinely collected administrative data with a cross-sectional assessment of self-reported child mental health and wellbeing at a critical stage of development (middle childhood). This self-report survey provides each child a voice within the routinely collected records (which provide valuable information about mental and physical health, child protection services, educational achievement and attendance, and criminal justice system contacts of both the children and their parents). More information about the records combined in the Wave 2 linkage, and the Middle Childhood Survey, can be found in our cohort profile papers.
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A third wave of record linkage (wave 3) for the NSW-CDS was conducted in 2021/22 to provide new information about the same cohort of children in their ADOLESCENT years of development, with data now spanning birth to 18 years of age. This linkage also included the new addition of Commonwealth data sets (e.g., Medicare records containing information about general health and allied health services, Pharmaceutical prescriptions) to supplement the state-wide health records, and parental child protection information which has not been included in previous linkage waves.
The NSW-CDS includes a representative population sample of Australian children and young people in the most populous state of NSW, capturing 99.7% of children who commenced formal schooling in 2009.
The inclusion of parental mental health, criminal justice system and child protection information for more than 80% of the child cohort enables the exploration of crucial intergenerational factors.
The self-reported Middle Childhood Survey is a unique aspect of the NSW-CDS which provides information on the thoughts, feelings, actions and experiences of >27,000 children who were aged 11-12 years.
Alongside the Middle Childhood Survey, participating schools completed a survey (the SSPESH) to gather information about their school’s implementation of student mental health and wellbeing programs.