Survey description

At 3 and 4 years old, three different surveys were conducted among the children in the Elfe cohort:

I) The 3.5-year Survey;

II) The Preschool Survey ("Moyenne Section de Maternelle") (documentation available in French only);

III) The PMI Survey (documentation available in French only).

 

The 3.5-year Survey

The 3.5-year survey is the third follow-up step after the inclusion of Elfe children in the maternity ward. It includes a telephone survey and an in-home survey.

The main objectives of the telephone survey at 3.5 years were to update information on the child’s environment since the survey at 2 years (family, social, economic, cultural, dietary, toxic, etc.), to question parents on their educational and cultural practices, and to document the child’s psychomotor development and early health events (use of healthcare, pathologies, etc.).

The new themes introduced at 3.5 years concern siblings not living at home, the start of nursery school, and children’s exposure to UV rays.

The purpose of the home visit was to collect information directly from the child (psychomotor development and visual tests), and on subgroups to collect non-invasive biological samples, environmental samples, and an assessment of the child’s physical activity and sleep using accelerometry. 

Based on the 18,041 families who had given their consent in the maternity ward, the 3.5-year telephone survey was carried out either completely or incompletely for 11,935 families (home visits to 9,293 families).

For more information on this stage of the Elfe study, you can download the following documents:

Home survey questionnaire at 3.5 years old

Home survey protocol and results at 3.5 years old

The other surveys conducted at 3.5 years were not translated in English, please refer to the documentation available below.

 

 

The Moyenne Section de Maternelle Survey

The Moyenne Section de Maternelle Survey was conducted in the spring of 2016, based on an address database of 8,700 schools collected during the 3.5-year-old telephone survey. In the French educational system, the Moyenne Section de Maternelle ("MS") corresponds to the second year of preschool (kindergarten) in France, typically for children aged 4 to 5 years old.

To carry out the survey, educational materials were sent to these schools, while families received an envelope to hand over to the teacher, thus formalizing their consent to the survey.

The survey aimed to collect three types of information:

  • the teacher’s perception of the child;
  • their teaching practices and professional background;
  • observations of the child’s cognitive and academic abilities.

The survey focused on the Elfe child and, anonymously, three other children from the same class.

The final participation in the survey included 5,178 Elfe children (49% of the 10,553 Elfe children whose school address was known) and approximately 10,877 children from the same class.

The PMI Survey

Thanks to a partnership established with 30 departmental PMI services across metropolitan France, medical data from the 4-year-old check-up conducted in preschool were collected for 3,124 children in the cohort and 6,815 children born on the same days, but not included in the cohort, totalling 9,939 health records for 4-year-old children in the Petite section or Moyenne section of preschool.

The Protection Maternelle et Infantile (PMI) is a public health service in France dedicated to maternal and child health. It provides free medical check-ups, vaccinations, and early childhood monitoring to ensure the well-being of young children and pregnant women. PMI services play a crucial role in preventive healthcare, particularly for children under six, by conducting regular health screenings in collaboration with schools and healthcare professionals.

The data collected include special educational support provided at school, vaccination records, general clinical examination (weight, height..), hearing, vision and dental check-ups, an assessment of language skills and psychomotor development, and recommendations for medical consultations given to parents.

For more information:

Protocol and participation report for the Elfe-PMI Survey (available in French)
Elfe-PMI Survey Questionnaire (available in French)

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IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Variables preceded by an asterisk (which appear in brackets in the PDF questionnaires) are not available on the platform. Most of them are considered indirectly identifying variables and require prior authorization from the CNIL (the French data protection authority). Some variables are still being processed (often labelled as "other: specify") and may be recoded or replaced later.