Wave 1 COVID-19 survey content and data
Wave 1 of the COVID-19 Survey in Five National Longitudinal Studies took place in May 2020, collecting information from over 18,000 participants across five longitudinal studies. In this section find out about the content of Wave 1, response rates and how to access the data.
Accessing the data
The data from the four CLS studies taking part (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’) is available under secure conditions, on request to CLS. Find out more about how to apply for access.
Wave 1 data from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development are available from the UK Data Service, under Special Licence.
If you are publishing research using our COVID-19 data, please make sure you cite the data and also let us know, so we can make sure we add your work to our online bibliography when published.
Training videos to support researchers using Wave 1 data are available on this page.
Response to Wave 1
|
Study
|
Response
|
|
Millennium Cohort Study (cohort members)
|
2,645
|
|
Millennium Cohort Study (parents)
|
2,831
|
|
Next Steps
|
1,907
|
|
1970 British Cohort Study
|
4,223
|
|
1958 National Child Development Study
|
5,178
|
|
MRC National Survey of Health and Development (1946 British birth cohort)
|
1,258
|
|
Total
|
18,042
|
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
The aim of the survey was to collect insights into the lives of study participants including their physical and mental health and wellbeing, family and relationships, education, work, and finances during the first national lockdown. The questions focussed mainly on how participants’ lives had changed from just before the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020 up until their response to the survey during the height of the lockdown restrictions in May 2020.
Explore the topics covered below and compare them with the content of the Wave 2 and Wave 3 surveys. The complete questionnaire is also available to download from this page as part of the documentation for the survey data.
Our studies
