I fully concur with Roamer's request for the HBSC survey to be made public (The Sunday Times, August 3). I have serious doubts on how faithful to reality the results of the survey are, specifically with regard to the number of secondary schoolchildren who live with only one of their parents.

I base these doubts on research my colleague and I carried out in Church secondary schools over the past two years, as part of our professional duties as subject co-ordinators for religious education in Church schools. In the introductory part of the confidential questionnaire the students had to fill, they were asked to give some general personal information, including whether or not they lived with both their parents together.

In 2007 we surveyed four schools and only nine per cent of the 1,312 students who participated (89.5 per cent of the total population of the schools in question) declared that they do not live with both their parents together. Taken per school, the percentages of these students were seven, nine and 10 per cent.

In 2008 we surveyed two other schools, finding out that 11 per cent of the 492 students (90.1 per cent of the total population of the two schools) who replied the questionnaire were not living with both their parents together. This time the range was a bit wider with nine per cent in one school and 14 per cent in the other.

While I acknowledge that this research is limited in scope - it was restricted to a selected number of Church secondary schools - I believe that, given its nature of a census-type research, it does give a very accurate picture of the situation in the schools surveyed.

I believe it is also quite representative of the situation in Church schools in general - the schools were selected to represent the different types of schools we have in this sector.

I therefore, find it very difficult to accept the nationwide 37 per cent figure being put forward by the HBSC survey.

While the situation might not be as rosy as one would like it to be, nor is it as thorny as the HBSC survey projects it.

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