Cohort 2016

Summary

For the birth cohort 2016, we have chosen to start the survey when the students are in year 3, when the sample is drawn. The follow-up survey thus began in connection with the selection draw in the spring of 2023 when the pupils were in year 3 of compulsory school, 9918 pupils. New for the cohort is the teacher survey, which is collected as early as year 3. This survey will be reused when the selection goes into year 6. Guardians continue to receive a survey, as in the remaining cohorts. 

It follows from the definition that the population is delimited with regard to year affiliation, which means that it includes pupils with different years of birth. The majority, or just over 96 per cent, were born in 2016. The number of students who answered all or parts of the questionnaire is 3875 and the parent survey 3413. The proportion who responded to the student survey is 39 percent. The number of teachers who responded to the teacher survey is 542.

Basic information

Register data that Statistics Sweden provides in connection with the selection of classes. These mainly consist of:

• Year of birth
• Gender
• Migration background
• Income
• Educational background
• Socio-economic data

School administrative data

The school administrative data was obtained from year 3. A form is sent out to the school the student attends and the school fills in information for each student included in the survey. This information consists of:

• Municipality
• School
• Grade
• Class form
• Mother tongue
• Swedish for immigrants
• date when moving to another school
• New municipality
• New school
• Rating from the year this has been given 

The collection in year 3

Cognitive tests

The cognitive tests are of an intelligence test nature containing tasks of a verbal, inductive and spatial nature. These have been given at each collection in grades 3 and 6 and began at the evaluation in 1961. The three sub-tests and how they were developed are described in Svensson, A. (1964) (pdf downloadable from GUPEA).

We have chosen to use the three original cognitive tests for cohorts in 2016, and thus did not include the antonym tests that were added in 2005. The three tests are: 

• Sheet metal folding: To find out which among four figures you get, if you fold a depicted "piece of sheet metal".
• Number series: To supplement a number series, where six numbers are given, with two more numbers.
• Synonyms: To list the synonym of a particular keyword among four options.

More about the cognitive tests can be read in: Relative achievement: school performance in relation to intelligence, sex and home environment (pdf downloadable from GUPEA).

Questionnaire for students

The questionnaire includes 15 questions in addition to the cognitive tests. Most questions are formulated as main questions with a number of sub-questions with four or five answer alternatives. In this collection, we have replaced binary answer options (yes/no) with four-point scales. This decision has been made to create space for more nuanced answers, which can then be combined if you want to compare them with previous surveys from year 3. The questions concern the following areas:

• The pupils' well-being (1, 8, 11, 14, 15) and interest in different subjects (4).
• The pupils' self-assessment in different subjects (2, 3, 5, 6 and 7) which shows the ability of the pupils to acquire knowledge and skills in different areas of knowledge.
• Pupils' motivation (12).
• Working methods in the classroom (9).
• The parents' involvement in the child's school situation (10) shows the parents' interest in the child's school situation and their future educational plans.
• Leisure activities (13).

The exact wording of the questions can be found in the questionnaire for students in year 3 (pdf 1 MB). The final version of the survey will be published shortly.

Questionnaire for guardians

The form sent to the guardians contained 21 questions divided into the following areas:

• The child's upbringing.
• Ambitions and wishes regarding the child's education.
• The parents' own educational and professional situation.
• Views on the school's objectives.

The exact formulations of the questions can be found in the questionnaire to guardians in year 6 (cohort 2010) that has been reused for this cohort. 

The final version of the survey will be published shortly.  

Questionnaire for teachers

The teachers have also received a questionnaire to give as complete a picture as possible of the student's school situation. The teacher survey has been processed for this collection, where we have taken inspiration from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018. We have increased the number of questions with a focus on the teachers' experiences and experiences of opportunities for skills development, development measures, resources at the school, etc. More information will be published shortly.