What We Do
From Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
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From Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
Published on
Last updated on
The Data and Analytics Unit (DAU) and the Research and Evaluation Unit (REU) aim to enhance the lives of children, young people, families and communities through supporting research and evidence-based policy development in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY).
This is achieved by:
To get in touch, please email us at dataandanalytics@equality.gov.ie or research@equality.gov.ie
In the EiPP team, we help staff across DCEDIY so that they have relevant and recent evidence to inform their policy making and decision making. We have several ways to do this, from being a sounding board to giving advice on conducting research, to commissioning and managing external contractors. We also can conduct research to meet the policy needs of the department.
Our guiding principle is that the research help we offer should be:
For more information please see Recent Research.
The Research and Evaluation Unit, as the representative of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) within DCEDIY, is responsible for conducting evaluation projects in policy areas across the Department.
The REU Evaluation team’s projects include Focused Policy Assessments, Spending Reviews, and a range of internal policy and programme evaluations. The team also provide technical and evaluation inputs to policymakers across the DCEDIY.
The evaluation team have developed high-level evaluation resources for DCEDIY policymakers, which can be found in the evaluation publications section on Our Publications page.
Strategic Research is a programme of proactive and longer term research initiatives and developments. This includes Growing Up in Ireland, the national longitudinal study of children, as well as the development of a cross government programme of research on children and young people, and support to a multi-dimensional DCEDIY research and data project on children in care and adults who were in care as children.
Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is the national longitudinal study of children and young people, and the flagship research project of DCEDIY, managed in association with the Central Statistics Office. Growing Up in Ireland represents a very significant investment by the State in high quality research and data on the lives of children, young people and their families. The aim of this longitudinal study is to examine the factors which support or undermine the well-being of children and young people, in order to inform effective and responsive policy making and service development.
Since 2008, GUI has collected data from two large cohorts:
Both cohorts also took part in a short UI Covid-19 survey in 2020, which collected information on the impact of Covid restrictions on the lives of both cohorts at the ages of 12 and 22.
View a list of all publications related to GUI data.
The purpose of the DAU is to provide statistical, data and analytic support to aid planning, monitoring and policy formulation across the department. We collect data from a number of sources to provide a set of indicators, relating to the wellbeing of children, young people, families and the communities we serve. These indicators help us track and measure progress in relation to these groups which informs policy and decision making. We also produce Statistical Spotlight reports on particular cohorts (e.g. children under 12 years of age) or on particular topics (e.g. Positive gender norms in Ireland).
In the DAU team, we are responsible for:
Our reports are available on Our Publications page. These include Statistical Spotlights, the State of the Nation's Children (SONC) reports, and data for Young Ireland, the national policy framework for children and young people 2023–2028.
The DAU also have a particular focus on data to support and assist the department's response to the situation in Ukraine and are responsible for:
The Knowledge Transfer team is responsible for making research knowledge and information easy to access, and promoting its use in DCEDIY. We help to make sure that the work of DCEDIY and the REU has impact and that it is used to make better policies.
Responsibilities include events coordination, facilitating staff access to evidence and library resources and managing REU’s dissemination and outreach strategy.