Centre for longitudinal studies

Next Steps Age 32 Sweep

Year
Age
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2022
32
On this page:
Sweep details About the Age 32 data Access the data Webinars Special features at age 32 Documentation

Sweep details

Sweep status Completed
Dates April 2022 to September 2023
Age 32
Respondents Cohort members
Fieldwork agency Ipsos
Data access

Dataset available via the UK Data Service [SN 5545]. Visit the UK Data Service to access the data.
Survey mode Online, face-to-face, video, telephone
Description

The Age 32 Sweep involved:

  • 60-minute survey – online or face to face (alternatives to ‘in-home’ interviews were offered)

The survey covered the following broad themes:

    • Family and relationships, and housing: including topics such as relationships with partners, children, other members of the household, and current accommodation.
    • Employment and finances: including topics such as work, income, wealth (e.g., savings and debts, pensions, and housing) and financial literacy.
    • Education: including topics such as academic and vocational qualifications, and education fees (receipt of student loans, scholarships, grants, or bursaries).
    • Health and wellbeing, and working memory capacity: including topics such as physical health, mental health, health behaviours (exercise, diet, smoking, drinking, drugs), short-term memory and concentration.
    • Identity and attitudes, and personality: including topics such as ethnic and national identity, sexual orientation and gender identity, social networks and support, social and political participation, attitudes and values, personality traits.
    • Childhood circumstances and other live events: including topics such as childhood health and difficult events in childhood (parental separation or death, childhood abuse, financial difficulties), pregnancies and pregnancy outcomes, fertility treatment and pregnancy planning.
    • Partner information: including education, employment and income.
  • Seeking permission to link to information from routine administrative records (if not previously given).
  • Seeking permission to collect a saliva sample for genetic research.

The Age 32 Sweep was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

About the Age 32 Sweep

NEWS

Next Steps Age 32 data now available

18 September 2024

Data from the Next Steps Age 32 Sweep are now available to download from the UK Data Service.

WATCH AGAIN

Next Steps at age 32: explore the new data

6 March 2025

In this webinar recording, explore the new data available from Next Steps, learn why this national cohort study of millennials is such a valuable research resource and discover some of the first findings at age 32.

How to access the data

Most of the Age 32 Sweep data are available from the UK Data Service under an end user licence agreement, with selected sensitive data available under secure access arrangements.

Data available under end user licence.

Data available under secure access.

Special features at age 32

Saliva sample

At age 32, cohort members were invited to provide saliva samples for genotyping. This information will facilitate the analysis of both genetic and environmental factors on various outcomes, such as health or labour market outcomes, as well as enabling cross-cohort comparisons with other British cohorts. Access is governed by the CLS Data Access Committee.

Quality controlled and imputed genetic data are available for 1,568 cohort members, obtained from 1,683 samples from consenting cohort members. Samples were obtained using the Oragene DNA kit and returned to a lab at the University of Bristol for DNA extraction, analysis, and storage.

More information on the genetic data available for research purposes is available on our genetic data and biological samples page.

Childhood circumstances

Next Steps started when cohort members were in secondary school, so information from early childhood was not available.

At age 32, cohort members were asked about their childhood, including their health and their families’ financial stability.

These data help paint a fuller picture of the cohort members’ background to gain an understanding about the relationship between childhood experiences and later life outcomes.

Political attitudes

Age 32 sweep included several questions related to cohort members’ interest in politics.

They were asked about their general interest in politics, whether they’ve recently taken part in public demonstrations or protests, whether they voted at the last general election in 2019 and which political party and whether they voted in the EU Referendum.

They were also asked their thoughts on immigration to Britain and immigrants’ effect on Britain’s economy.

Labour market relations

At age 32, most cohort members are likely settled into their career. Therefore work participation was retained as a strong theme in the Age 32 Sweep.

Cohort members were asked about their employment or other main activity since they were age 25, employment details, and resident partner’s employment.

Further details were collected to allow for occupational coding to SOC2010, as well as NS-SEC coding.

Cognitive assessment

For the first time in Next Steps, the Age 32 Sweep included a cognitive exercise to assess working memory capacity.

This exercise, known as the Backward Digit Span, involved presenting cohort members with sequences of numbers and asking them to repeat these sequences in reverse order.

Information from this exercise will enable research on identifying factors associated with differing levels of cognition and the effect of cognitive ability on other aspects of life.

Pregnancy and fertility

The Age 32 Sweep included comprehensive pregnancy histories for both men and women.

This included the outcome of these pregnancies and whether they received any medical assistance such as IVF.

Future fertility intentions were also asked for all cohort members. This information provides rich data into fertility-related behaviours of this cohort.

Health and mental health

Cohort members were asked a range of questions about their physical and emotional health and wellbeing at age 32.

These were similar to those asked at the Age 25 Sweep.

At age 32, the study collected information about:

  • cohort members’ health in general
  • physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 or more months
  • and whether they thought they would reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.

This information allowed longitudinal comparisons to age 25, as well as cross-cohort comparisons.

At age 32 there were further questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, including experiences of COVID, hospitalisation, tests, vaccinations and experiences of long COVID.

Following from age 25, members were also asked for:

  • self-reported height and weight
  • how frequently they exercise
  • their average hours of sleep
  • how frequently they have fizzy drinks.

The 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was used as a measure of current mental health at both Age 32 and Age 25 sweeps. At Age 32, further measures were included such as the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2-item (GAD-2), the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2), and the UCLA 3-Item Loneliness Scale. There were also questions on life satisfaction, and personality traits (BIG5, and GRIT scale).

Documentation

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

Next Steps Age 32 Sweep – User Guide

This user guide provides information about the data arising from the Next Steps Age 32 sweep and supports the deposit of the data at the UK Data Archive.

Date published: 12/09/2024
PDF: 2,68 MB

Download

Fertility histories in four British cohort studies User Guide

This user guide accompanies the deposit of datasets on the Cohort Members (CM) fertility histories in four UK cohort studies: MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS), and Next Steps.

Date published: 18/07/2025
PDF: 455,26 KB

Download

Next Steps: Sweep 9 geographical identifiers user guide

A user guide which provides guidance and recommendations for using geographical identifiers in Next Steps Age 32 Sweep (Sweep 9) data.

Date published: 22/01/2025
PDF: 192,96 KB

Download

Handling mode effects in the CLS cohort studies user guide (Nov 2024)

A user guide which provides guidance and recommendations for handling mode effects in CLS’ cohort studies through applied examples, using data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and Next Steps.

Date published: 26/11/2024
PDF: 2,3 MB

Download

Next Steps User Guide to Linked Health Administrative Datasets – Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)

This guide describes the data linkage of health administrative records from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) to survey data for cohort members in Next Steps. User guide updated: 2025.

Date published: 29/09/2020
PDF: 5,84 MB

Download

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

Download
Questionnaires

Next Steps Age 32 Online Short Mop-up Questionnaire

This questionnaire was given to non-response participants of the Next Steps Age 32 Sweep.

Date published: 17/07/2024
PDF: 1,32 MB

Download

Next Steps Age 32 Questionnaire

This questionnaire was given to participants of the Next Steps Age 32 Sweep.

Authors: Centre for Longitudinal Studies
Date published: 25/07/2023
PDF: 2,52 MB

Download

Next Steps Age 32 Sweep – Content Summary

Next Steps Age 32 Sweep – Content Summary

Date published: 20/01/2023
PDF: 159,38 KB

Download
Technical reports

Next Steps Age 32 Technical Report

This technical report accompanies the Next Steps Age 32 sweep.

Date published: 28/08/2024
PDF: 2,35 MB

Download
Data notes

No material of this type is available.

Additional

No material of this type is available.

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