Our studies
The UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies is home to a unique series of UK national cohort studies. Our studies follow multiple generations of people across the whole of their lives.
The majority of our studies are birth cohort studies that started at birth, or in the first year of life. Two of our studies (Next Steps and COSMO) began during adolescence. All our studies are nationally representative.
By collecting information from the same people over time, we build powerful resources for research and policy development. For more than 60 years, evidence from our studies has helped to inform and shape the world we live in today.
We are part of the UCL Social Research Institute based at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society.
We are funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and receive co-funding from a number of different funding bodies.
At CLS, we are responsible for scientific leadership and operational management of a series of national cohort studies. The studies are:
We are also collaborators on the following studies:
We carry out data collections including surveys and bio-samples in the CLS cohort studies. We enhance the study data through administrative record and geo-environmental linkages.
We make these data available for researchers via the UK Data Service and other Trusted Research Environments (TREs).
The high quality of our data collection is supported by our survey methods programme. This provides evidence on best-practice ways to maximise response, maintain representation, and improve data quality.
We support researchers across disciplines and career stages to do high-quality research with our cohort data.
Our applied statistical methods programme provides guidance to users on how to handle missing data, approach issues around measurement including dealing with different modes of data collection, and make causal inferences using cohort data.
We are working hard on making the studies easier to use, by simplifying datasets, sharing code, creating new derived and harmonised variables and improving the discoverability of our data.
We have an active programme of free training for data users, providing training on topics including:
You can find out about upcoming training on our Events page and access recordings of previous webinars on our Training and support page.
Using CLS cohort data, we conduct multidisciplinary research into some of the UK’s most pressing social and public health challenges.
Find out more in the Our Research section of the website.
Our research and data collections are underpinned by the following themes:
We work closely together with UK and international longitudinal research communities, through a wide range of collaborations, including through Population Research UK, CLOSER, Survey Futures and the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration.
We are active members of the Society of Life Course and Longitudinal Studies.
In the following sections you can find out more about our team and how we work.
Find the latest developments and insights from across all our longitudinal studies.
The CLS Bibliography is a searchable database of published work based on our cohort studies. Search by keyword, author, date range and journal.
Data from our studies are mainly available through the UK Data Service. We run training to support researchers who are interested in using our studies in their work.
Centre for Longitudinal Studies
UCL Social Research Institute
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk
