NCDS Age 33 Sweep

Sweep details

Dates 1991
Age 33
Achieved sample 11,469 (cohort members)
Respondents Cohort members, partners, children
Fieldwork agency Social and Community Planning Research, NOP Market Research, and Research Surveys of Great Britain
Survey mode Face to face with paper self-completion questionnaire
Data access

Main dataset available via the UK Data Service [SN 5567]. Visit the UK Data Service website to access the data.

Description

Cohort members completed an interview which asked employment, partner’s job, education, training and qualifications, literacy and numeracy levels, family life, housing circumstances, income, savings, debts, health, smoking, drinking and citizenship.

In addition, two paper questionnaires were completed:

  • ‘What do you think’ asked about attitudes to a range of topics including politics, racism and the environment
  • ‘Your life since 1974’ sought to collect full histories of all jobs, relationships, children and addresses lived at since 16. (Spouses and partners were also asked to complete this questionnaire).

1 in 3 of were asked to take part in a ‘Mother and child’ study (if they had children). This involved:

  • A ‘mother interview’ which asked about family life and, for each child, details of: pregnancy and birth, health history, pre-school experience and schooling history.
  • A paper questionnaire about each child’s behaviour – completed by the child’s mother
  • Age-specific assessments completed by children which measured various aspects of cognitive development

Special features at age 33

Relationships, housing and employment histories

The age 33 sweep collected information about all cohabiting relationships, periods of economic activity and housing circumstances since cohort members were 16.

These ‘histories’ have been continually updated in every subsequent sweep and can be used to study the trajectories which people follow through life and how transitions in different domains of life are inter-related.

Mother and child study

The age 33 sweep had a significant focus on parenting and children.

A randomly allocated 1 in 3 sample of cohort members were asked to participate in a ‘Mother and child’ study which included a ‘mother interview’, and a paper questionnaire about each child’s behaviour, which was completed by the child’s mother. The children themselves completed a series of cognitive assessments, which were similar in nature to assessments completed by cohort members when they were children, allowing for examination of inter-generational transfer of ability.

Documentation

  • User guides
  • Questionnaires
  • Technical reports
  • Data notes
  • Additional
User guides

NCDS Age 33 Guide to the Data

User guide to the 5th sweep of NCDS

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 5,71 MB

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NCDS 2006 Re-deposit User Guide

User guide to accompany the redeposit of data up to age 46

Date published: 01/11/2006
PDF: 87,19 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Derived Variables

This documentation gives details of selected derived variables that have been developed by researchers during work analysing data from NCDS5. This is part of a programme of work to make available to the wider research community revised data from the 5th sweep of NCDS.

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 178,53 KB

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NCDS Age 23-50 Partnership Histories

A guide to the partnership histories dataset collected from age 23 onwards

Date published: 01/11/2011
PDF: 245,98 KB

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Partnership Histories Guide (1974-2013)

Date published: 01/11/2017
PDF: 374,82 KB

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Activity Histories Guide (1974-2013)

Date published: 01/10/2016
PDF: 594,01 KB

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NCDS revised region variables

Date published: 01/03/2012
PDF: 523,56 KB

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Handling missing data in the CLS cohort studies – User Guide

This user guide aims to describe and illustrate a straightforward approach to missing data handling, while detailing some more general considerations around missing data along the way.

Date published: 03/06/2024
PDF: 1000,62 KB

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Questionnaires

NCDS Age 33 Cohort Member Interview Questionnaire

Questionnaire for cohort members administered in the Age 33 sweep of NCDS.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 5,11 MB

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NCDS Age 33 Coding Frames for Open-Ended Questions

Coding Frames for Open-ended questions in the 5th sweep of NCDS

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 128,93 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Annotated ‘What Do You Think?’ Questionnaire

Annotated version of the “What Do You Think?” questionnaire given to cohort members.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 821,99 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Annotated ‘Your Life Since 1974’ Questionnaire

Annotated version of the “Your Life Since 1974” questionnaire given to cohort members.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 1,06 MB

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NCDS Age 33 Annotated Child Interview

Annotated child interview administered in the Age 33 sweep of NCDS.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 1,92 MB

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NCDS Age 33 Annotated ‘Your Child’ Questionnaire

Annotated version of the “Your Child” questionnaire given to cohort members.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 1,9 MB

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NCDS Age 33 Annotated Mother Interview

Annotated mother interview administered in the Age 33 sweep of NCDS.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 1,45 MB

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Behaviour Problems Index

Date published: 03/06/1991
PDF: 173,76 KB

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Your life since 1974 partner questionnaire

Date published: 01/06/1974
PDF: 1,09 MB

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Technical reports

NCDS Age 33 Survey Methodology

Report on NCDS 5th sweep survey

Date published: 01/09/1993
PDF: 1,87 MB

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NCDS Age 33 Interviewer Instructions

The instructions given to interviews for the Age 33 sweep of NCDS.

Date published: 01/05/1991
PDF: 3,77 MB

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Data notes

NCDS Age 33 Data Note 1: Revised Housing Event History Dataset

The following document contains details of the revised dataset developed by Pamela Di Salvo at SSRU which contains amended data based on the Housing section of the NCDS5 ‘Your Life Since 1974’ event history instrument.

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 284,09 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 2: Partnership Histories

NB This Data Note has been partially superseded by the results of an ESRC-funded project consolidating and cleaning female partnership histories (but not male) for NCDS4, NCDS5 and NCDS6 (see ‘NCDS5-6 Data Note’ downloadable here).  The dataset is now available from the UK Data Archive.

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 262,59 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 3: Employment and Childbearing: derivation & cleaning of the dataset

NB This Data Note is not available here for download, as we do not have the derived dataset itself, and the syntax contained in the appendices cannot readily be used to produce it from the raw NCDS5 data.

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 479,18 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 4: Job Histories: employment status 1974-91

This NCDS Data Note reports on work done to improve the quality and consistency of data relating to the job histories of cohort members available for the fifth follow-up of the National Child Development Study

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 723,34 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 5: Subjects of Qualifications and Courses

Data Note on the coding of qualifications reported in NCDS5

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 257,26 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 6: Family Income and Wealth/ Weekly and Hourly Pay

The following documentation gives details of derived variables relating to family income and wealth; and weekly and hourly pay in NCDS5

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 269,84 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 7: Revised Occupation Data for Current/last Job

Occupation information gathered during the NCDS5 survey was coded using CASOC (Computer-Assisted Standard Occupation Coding) software which created errors. This data note reports the re-coding of occupations

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 202,48 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 8: Industry for Current/last Job

Information gathered in relation to the current or most recent job has now been coded using both the 1980 and the 1992 Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 279,42 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 9: Revised Region Data

Data Note reporting on the creation of a new regional variable which has fewer missing cases than previous

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 169,89 KB

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NCDS Age 33 Data Note 10: Child Histories: Reconciling self-completion and interview data

This Data Note reports on work done to improve the quality and consistency of data relating to the children of cohort members available for NCDS5.

Date published: 01/05/2000
PDF: 967,65 KB

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NCDS Age 33-42 Data Note 5: Partnership Histories

NB This publication has recently been superseded by the results of an exercise to distil employment data from NCDS4 onwards into one consolidated dataset. The dataset was deposited at the UK Data Archive in 2012, and is available for download. The user guide which accompanied that deposit are available from the User Guide section.

Date published: 01/05/2005
PDF: 97,75 KB

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Additional

Deriving highest qualification in NCDS and BCS70

This Data Note explains the derivation of variables on Highest Educational Qualification obtained by cohort members in the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).

Date published: 01/01/2011
PDF: 514,11 KB

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NCDS Birth-Age 50 Target and Achieved Samples

Table of target and actual sweep samples for NCDS up to age 50

Date published: 01/05/2008
PDF: 21,84 KB

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NCDS Ethical Review and Consent

Review of the ethical practices throughout NCDS

Date published: 02/06/2014
PDF: 1,76 MB

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Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk

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