Jake Anders is the Principal Investigator of the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities study (COSMO) which has recently released it’s first wave of data. He shares about the aims of the study, some findings from Wave 1 and what comes next.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a generation-defining south korea rcs data challenge in many ways. It has had profound effects on young people’s lives by disrupting their development, wellbeing and education. This is likely to have substantial, long-lasting effects on later life chances.
Early signs suggest that those from lower-income homes have been affected the most. To address these impacts, we must understand them, including the variation between groups such as socio-economic background and ethnicity. This needs high quality, representative data with sufficient participants from within these groups.
To this end — with support from UKRI’s COVID-19 rapid response fund, follow-up funding from the ESRC for Wave 2, and targeted funding from the Sutton Trust for specific elements of the work — we established the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunity Study (COSMO for short), harnessing the power of longitudinal research to understand the experiences of a cohort for whom the pandemic has had an major impact, including on their educational and career trajectories.