Life at age 17 – latest findings from the Growing Up in Scotland study

Eleanor is interested in how we can bring deliberative methods and research to more social and cultural arenas to address societal challenges and create policy which is better informed and democratically developed.

She is a multidisciplinary qualitative researcher with experience in the fields of history, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Eleanor is a historian of social memory and memorialisation by training, with a focus on the role of culture in promoting social cohesion and creating spaces for dialogue. Her PhD examined rituals of remembrance in Britain after the First World War and, since then, she has followed these concerns into contemporary settings in both academic and public facing research. From 2018-2020, she worked as an embedded researcher at Historic Royal Palaces, investigating participation in the mega-hit installation Blood Swept Lands & Seas of Red (2014). Since then, Eleanor has worked on two projects concerning the impact of COVID-19 on culture and society. As part of the project British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19, she studied the pandemic’s impact on death rituals and memorialisation through a combination of ethnographic and sociological methods. She is interested in the collective ethical and social questions raised by how we produce and use technologies of memorialisation.

Eleanor is a passionate advocate for the importance of qualitative research to creating ethical public policy making and institutions. Working with the Pandemic & Beyond, a hub for Arts and Humanities Research Council pandemic-impact research, she produced a report for the Pandemic UK Ethics Accelerator for submission to the COVID-19 inquiry, demonstrating how qualitative research can help us grasp the nature and extent of the societal impacts of COVID-19.

She has enjoyed working with a range of stakeholders and communities, from religious backgrounds, arts and culture, and heritage, and is looking forward to developing research initiatives through new collaborations and partnerships as part of the Centre.

Line is a Research Director in the Longitudinal Surveys team. She has significant experience in managing and directing large, complex studies involving children, young people, young adults and parents and writing up and disseminating findings from these and other studies. She also has significant expertise in conducting research on best practice in survey research, with a focus on enhancing inclusivity and engagement.

Among her recent projects, Line led the SEND Futures Discovery Phase study which explored the views and experiences of young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their parents. She also led the pilot and development phase for the initial wave of a new large-scale cohort study of secondary school children. Additionally, Line continues to be actively involved in the Growing Up in Scotland study, a long-running project following children in Scotland born in 2004/05.

Helena joined NatCen in March 2021 after graduating with a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. Helena is a researcher in the Health and Biomedical team and primarily works on the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey and Patterns of Play.

Paul is Director of the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), NatCen’s Edinburgh-based team. In a career spanning more than 20 years, Paul has worked on a wide range of studies involving quantitative and qualitative methods and across a number of policy areas. His interest and experience lie mainly in survey methods, particularly longitudinal surveys, and broadly in the areas of families, children and young people.  

Paul’s principal research role over the last two decades has been associated with the leadership and delivery of the Growing Up in Scotland study, a large scale, multi-cohort, multidisciplinary prospective longitudinal birth cohort study commissioned by the Scottish Government, which he has led since the study’s launch in 2005.

In the last decade, he has overseen the delivery of several high profile Scottish and UK wide survey projects including the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, the Scottish Health Survey, the 1970 British Cohort Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. He has also contributed to significant UK-wide longitudinal projects and initiatives including the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study and Population Research UK.

Paul regularly delivers presentations on survey findings and methodology to a wide range of audiences including policymakers, practitioners, academics and students.  He has also given evidence to a number of parliamentary committees in Scotland and Northern Ireland.