Centre for Longitudinal Studies

CLS is responsible for running three of Britain’s internationally-renowned birth cohort studies:

  • 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS)
  • 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)
  • Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).

These studies follow the same group of people throughout their lives, charting social change and untangling the reasons behind it. CLS manages the extensive process of surveying all cohort members through a combination of face-to-face and telephone interviews, and paper and online questionnaires.

The UK Data Service works closely with CLS to ensure timely delivery of these major cohort series to users and have more recently enabled researchers to access COVID-19 related survey data.