The Age 11 Sweep was conducted during the final year of the cohort members’ primary schooling. It collected information on the cohort members’ and parents’ health, care, education, social and family circumstances.
Interviewers visited the cohort members’ homes and conducted face-to-face interviews with both resident parents. Parents also answered some questions via self-completion. Information collected from parents covered family composition, housing, parental health, employment and income, parenting attitudes and activities, alongside the cohort members’ health, including puberty, behaviour and development, schooling and child care arrangements.
Cohort members completed a paper questionnaire on their own. It covered their lives, school, relationships and attitudes, as well as more sensitive topics like smoking and drinking alcohol, bullying and anti-social behaviour.
The interviewer conducted a number of age-appropriate cognitive assessments with the cohort member. These were a verbal similarities assessment (British Abilities Scales), and two touchscreen computer-based activities developed by Cambridge Cognition from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB): the Cambridge Gambling Task (to measure risk taking and decision making under uncertainty) and the Spatial Working Memory Task (to measure ability to retain spatial information).
Measurements of height, weight and body fat were taken.
Cohort members’ class teachers completed a postal questionnaire about the final year of primary school.
Permission was asked of parents to link their own economic records to their survey data.