1970 British Cohort Study

BCS70 follows the lives of all people born in England, Scotland and Wales in one particular week in 1970. Those born in Northern Ireland were included in the birth sweep, but were not followed up in any of the subsequent sweeps.

During the birth sweep, information was collected about 16,568 babies born in England, Scotland and Wales, and a further 628 born in Northern Ireland who were not followed up subsequently. At ages 5, 10 and 16, the sample was augmented with those who had been born overseas in the relevant week and subsequently moved to Great Britain. This resulted in 79 new recruits at age 5, 294 at age 10 and 65 at 16.

The Age 46 sweep has collected extensive information on health to support biomedical and biosocial research.

The sweep collected objective measures of anthropometry (height, weight, body fat, waist and hip circumference), blood pressure/pulse, grip strength, balance, and blood samples (for analysis of cholesterol and hba1c, storage for future analyses and DNA extraction). In addition, participants wore an ActivPal device for 7 days to measure physical and sedentary activity and completed an online questionnaire about their diet.

Health has been a continual focus of BCS70, but the Age 46 sweep was the first time that objective measures of health have been collected since childhood. The data collected will provide a thorough assessment of health in mid-life, and when combined with data from previous sweeps will allow for detailed examinations of the predictors of mid-life health status. Cross cohort comparisons will be possible with the 1958 National Child Development Study biomedical sweep.

The Age 34 sweep had an emphasis on parenting and children, with cohort members’ own offspring taking part in the sweep.

At age 34, a randomly allocated 1 in 2 sample of cohort members completed an additional interview module and a paper self-completion questionnaire about each of their children.

Cohort members’ children aged over 10 also completed their own questionnaires and a series of cognitive assessments, which allows for the study of transfer of ability from one generation to the next.

Partnership histories are available in a longitudinal dataset which contains information about live-in partnerships lasting one month or more, from age 26 to 46.

The dataset includes data on partnership type (cohabitation and/or marriage), start and end dates, duration, outcome and if relevant whether divorced and divorce dates. A similar dataset is available for NCDS, which enables users to conduct cross-cohort comparisons.