Administrative data from relevant government departments and agencies have been linked to the survey data in the domains of health and education. The data are available to access through the UK Data Service. Up to age 16, these linkages are based on parental consent collected at various time points. At age 17, we asked cohort members for their own consent.
Health
Linked health data are available from birth registration records and maternity records based on parental consent shortly after birth. We are working to link Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) for England and have already linked some health data for Scotland and Wales.
Linked health data are available from Scottish Medical Records (SMR) for 2000-2015 (outpatient, inpatient and day care, maternity, Prescribing Information System).
For Wales the number of inpatient and day case hospitalisations at ages 0-11 are available. A range of Welsh health records up to cohort members’ 14th birthdays can also be linked to the cohort data through the SAIL Databank, including Child Health, Emergency Department, Patient Episode Database and Primary Care GP data.
Education
For cohort members in England, pupil-level linked education data from the National Pupil Database are available for Key Stages 1, 2 and 4, including exam results as well as information on absences, ethnicity, languages spoken at home, special educational needs, and eligibility for free school meals. School-level data are also available.
For Scotland and Wales, Key Stage 1 data are available through UKDS. For Wales, education records up to and including Key Stage 4 can also be linked to cohort data through the SAIL Databank.
Future data linkage
At age 17, cohort members were asked for their permission to link data from an extensive range of administrative records to the MCS survey data. These include information on:
- health (from hospital records)
- education and training records after age 16
- higher education applications and offers
- payments of student loans
- records kept by the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs, including about benefit claims, participation in employment programmes, jobs, earnings, tax and National Insurance
- crime records.
We are pursuing these linkages with the aim of making the linked administrative data, including data currently only accessible through the SAIL Databank, available via the UK Data Service. We are currently applying to link to HES data which will include COVID-19 data and plan to refresh the SMR linkages.