Growing up in New Zealand (GUINZ) Study: Now We Are Four
To date, Growing Up in New Zealand has released four comprehensive descriptive reports with results from their cohort before birth, at nine months, at two and at four years old.
The latest report is Now We Are Four: Describing the preschool years provides insight into the health and wellbeing, and social and emotional functioning of New Zealand four year olds. The report also depicts changes in the children's home environment, participation in early childhood education, household mobility and socioeconomic situation over the first four years of their lives.
Using information from direct observations of the children and interviews with their mothers, the report paints a dynamic picture of what it is like to be a child growing up in 21st in New Zealand.
A key strength of Growing Up in New Zealand is that the diversity of children and families being followed is comparable to the children being born in New Zealand today. One in four cohort children is identified as Māori by their mother at the age of four years, one in five as Pacific and one in six as Asian. More than half the children are reported as identifying with more than one ethnicity, a proportion we see increasing as the children grow up.
