Webinar recording and slides

This event took place on Thursday, 12 February 2026.

You can download a PDF of the Millennium Cohort Study at age 23: explore the new data webinar slides here.

About the event

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a UK longitudinal birth cohort study that is following the lives of around 19,000 young people born across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 2000-02. This webinar recording provides a first look at the latest sweep of the study, collected when the cohort members were aged 23 and now available from the UK Data Service.

The data collected from this cohort are valuable to researchers studying transitions from birth into early adulthood in key domains such as: 

• family, relationships, and housing 
• employment and finances 
• education 
• health and wellbeing 
• cognition. 

Highlights from the Age 23 Sweep include:

• Cohort members completed cognitive assessments and answered questions about their financial literacy, physical health, mental health and aspirations for the future. 
• Cohort members provided information about their university choices and employment. 
• For the first time, cohort members shared information about their own children (where applicable), revealing new insights into child development and parenting for a new generation of parents.
• This is the first sweep of MCS to use a sequential mixed-mode design, with some cohort members completing the survey online and some through face-to-face interviews.  

What’s covered in the recording?

• A guide to what’s new in the MCS data, including longitudinal (repeated) measures, as well as special features at age 23.  
• Information about data collection and mode, as well as availability of weights. 
• A spotlight on initial findings from this cohort when they are 23.  
• Information on accessing the data from the UK Data Service and where to go for more information. 

Who should watch?

This webinar recording will be useful to both experienced and new users of MCS data. Anyone interested in exploring how young adults are navigating this particularly dynamic stage of their lives would benefit from watching this.