Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) is an initiative of the Australian Government. The study is guided by a majority Indigenous Steering Committee chaired by Associate Professor Kalinda Griffiths. LSIC aims to provide quality quantitative and qualitative data that can give insights into how a child’s early years affect their development over the life course. The study includes two groups of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander youth who were aged 6 to 18 months (B cohort) and 3.5 - 5 years (K cohort) when the study began in 2008.
Footprints in Time families are located in many urban, regional and remote areas across Australia.
In wave 1 (2008), we conducted over 1,680 interviews with parents or primary carers. Primary carers were usually mothers. Over 265 interviews were also conducted with fathers or other significant carers. We added more families in our wave 2 interviews. Participants have shown a strong commitment to Footprints in Time. As the young people become adults we want to continue interviewing to see what has helped Footprints kids grow up strong, go onto further education, employment and raise families of their own.
The study covers a wide variety of topics. They include health, learning and development, Culture, identity, Country, and language; experiences of racism, schooling (engagement, outcomes), family and community housing, computer and internet use, values and aspirations, work and further education. You can find more information from the Data Dictionary and Data User Guide. Both documents are publicly available from the Australian Data Archive (ADA) Dataverse LSIC Dataverse(link is external) page without applying for the data.