Wave 3 COVID-19 survey content and data

Wave 3 of the COVID-19 Survey in Five National Longitudinal Studies took place between February and March 2021, collecting information from almost 28,000 participants. In this section, find out about the content of Wave 3, response rates and how to access the data.

Accessing the data

Data from all three waves of the survey in the four CLS studies (the Millennium Cohort Study, Next Steps, the 1970 British Cohort Study and the National Child Development Study) has been de-identified and is available for researchers to download under End User Licence from the UK Data Service. To download the data (SN: 8658), visit the UK Data Service website. The data are also available from each of the main pages for the four studies on the UK Data Service website: Millennium Cohort Study – Next Steps – 1970 British Cohort Study – National Child Development Study.

Access to responses to the open question (‘Express in your own words the main ways the coronavirus
outbreak has affected your life and/or your loved ones so far, and what you think the effects might
be in the future’) is available under secure conditions, on request to CLS. Find out more about how to apply for access.

Wave 1 and Wave 2 data from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development is available from the UK Data Service under Special Licence Access. Wave 3 data will be available from the UK Data Service shortly, and in the interim researchers can submit an application to the study to access the Wave 3 data.

If you are publishing research using our COVID-19 data, please make sure you cite the data, and also let us know, so that we can add your work to our online bibliography when published.

Response to Wave 3

Further information about response to the survey and the derivation of response weights is available in the User Guide.

For more information about handling missing data in longitudinal studies, see our Handling Missing Data page.

Survey content

This third wave repeated many of the questions featured in Waves 1 and 2, enabling researchers to examine how people’s experiences, circumstances and views have changed as the crisis has continued.

Other questions in this wave were new additions, including questions about the vaccination programme and long COVID. Work and finances, a topic covered in the previous waves, featured again in this wave, but with additional questions on pay and household income. Home schooling, physical health and health behaviours, mental health and wellbeing, social contact, family and relationships, and trust are among the other topics explored in this third survey.

Explore the topics covered below and compare them with the content of Wave 1 and Wave 2. The complete questionnaire is also available to download from this page as part of the documentation for the survey data.