National Statistical

Ensuring children’s voices are represented in our statistics is essential for building a better understanding of their lives and the risks they face. The Children’s Crime Survey for England and Wales has moved online following falling response rates to the previous face-to-face survey. Caroline Youell, from the ONS Centre of Crime and Justice, explains how redesigning the survey and moving it online has improved participation and provided better insight into young people’s experiences and perceptions of safety both online and in their daily life.

For more than 15 years, the Children’s Crime Survey for England and Wales (CCSEW) has provided a unique window into the experiences of young people. By asking children aged 10 to 15 years directly about their lives, the survey has helped us understand their experiences of crime and bullying, their online experiences, and their perceptions of safety and wellbeing, providing valuable evidence for policymakers and the wider public.

Since its launch in 2009, the survey was – until now – carried out through face-to-face interviews alongside the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). One child aged 10 to 15 years was invited to take part in households where an adult had already completed the main survey. This approach generated valuable findings for many years. However, following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, fewer people were taking part in the survey. This made it increasingly difficult to produce statistics that remained accurate, representative and able to meet current user needs.

We therefore needed to review how the survey was designed and delivered to ensure it could continue to provide high-quality, timely statistics while becoming more flexible, inclusive and sustainable for the future.

Today we are publishing the first findings from the redesigned survey, covering children’s online experiences and their perceptions of safety in their local area. Later in the year, we will expand the survey with a second module exploring their experiences of bullying and being a victim of crime.

Building a survey for the future

One of the biggest changes we have made is moving the survey online. This gives children more privacy when answering questions and allows them to take part at a time and place that suits them. Completing responses independently, without an interviewer or parent sitting alongside them, helps children feel more comfortable sharing honest reflections on their experiences and perceptions. The survey has also been designed to work well across a range of devices, including smartphones, making it easy for children to take part wherever they are.

The other big change to the survey design is that it is now independent from the main CSEW.  An important part of the survey is making sure that the children who take part are representative of 10- to 15-year-olds living in households across England and Wales. Rather than selecting households and then choosing a child to take part, we invite eligible children directly using information from existing education and NHS records. The ONS has obtained the necessary approvals to use these data for this purpose and has sought independent ethical advice. This targeted approach helps us reach children from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances, so that the survey results better reflect the experiences and views of 10- to 15-year-olds across the population.

Maximising participation

Feedback from our 2022 consultation showed strong support for redesigning the survey, and it has been carefully redeveloped to encourage online participation and to ensure that children have a positive experience when taking part. The new approach has been developed through extensive research and testing with children. Their feedback has helped us improve the online questions and participant information throughout the design process. We have also worked closely with policy specialists and experts from across government, charities and independent organisations to help shape the survey content and provide confidence that the methods used are reliable. The pilot survey was highly successful, providing confidence that the online survey was easy for children to use and capable of delivering high-quality data.

To maximise participation, the survey uses a tailored communications strategy, including carefully timed reminder letters and a voucher for those who complete the questionnaire. Given the young age of respondents, particular care has been taken when developing the questionnaire, to use child-friendly language, keep the survey as short and simple as possible, and encourage open and honest responses. Taking part in the survey is entirely voluntary. Parents or guardians are asked to approve their child’s participation, and children are given the information they need to make an informed decision about whether they wish to take part. Together, these measures help us collect high-quality information while putting participants’ wellbeing first.

The results speak for themselves: with nearly 4 times as many (6,000) responses from the new survey, this is a marked improvement that gives policymakers a far more reliable evidence base for decisions that affect children.

Overall, the level of participation has exceeded 40%, and we are feeding our survey experiences and insights into wider work on increasing participation across ONS surveys.

Comparability of data over time

Moving the survey online marks an important step in improving how we collect information from children and young people. While this change means that future results cannot be compared directly with data collected through the previous interviewer-led CCSEW, it allows us to improve both the quality of the data and the inclusiveness of the survey.

Although there will be a break in the long-term data series, we believe the benefits of a more accessible, representative and modern survey outweigh the loss of direct comparability. In the long run, these improvements will help us build a richer and more accurate picture of children’s experiences, behaviours and perceptions, ensuring the survey continues to provide valuable insights for years to come.