COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities (COSMO) Study

Aims
The COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities Study (COSMO) is a longitudinal youth cohort study that was initiated following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is following the lives of over 13,000 young people in England who were in Year 11 during the 2020-21 academic year. The main aim of COSMO is to generate high-quality evidence for answering the question of how the pandemic affected socio-economic inequalities in life chances, including short-term educational attainment and wellbeing, and long-term educational and career outcomes.

Institution
Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), UCL;
Sutton Trust;
Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) - Institute of Education (IoE), UCL

Geographic coverage - Nations
England

Geographic coverage - Regions
Nationwide

Start date
2021

Catalogue record last updated
17/12/2024

Sample type
Cohort study

Sample details
The sample comprises students who were in Year 11 during the 2020-21 academic year. Young people and their parents were recruited from the National Pupil Database, with additional private school sample. The study disproportionately sampled young people from disadvantaged, ethnic minority and other hard-to-reach groups to ensure it reflects the full range of experiences of the pandemic. (Weights are available to adjust for the disproportionate sampling.)

13,787 young people and 11,731 parents responded at baseline. Of those, 10,051 responses were paired, 3,736 were young person-only responses and 1,680 were parent-only responses.

Sample size at recruitment
13,787 young people

Sample size at most recent sweep
11,523 (2022 - Wave 2)

Sex
All

Age at recruitment
16-17 years

Cohort year of birth
2004-05