Our data linkage programme

We’ve linked a range of administrative and geographic datasets to the 1958 National Child Development Study, 1970 Birth Cohort Study, Next Steps and Millennium Cohort Study.

This means researchers can analyse data that have been collected by public service providers, such as exam results and information on hospital treatment, alongside the wide variety of survey information we have collected direct from the people taking part in our studies. Combining different sources of data like this helps build an even more detailed picture of people’s lives and increases the range of research questions our cohort studies can answer.

We only link this individual-level administrative data to our cohort members’ survey data where we have their consent.

We have already linked a range of health data (including Hospital Episode Statistics) and education data (including National Pupil Database and Student Loans Company data) to our studies. We have also linked mortality data.

You can find out more about the specific datasets available on our health data linkage and education data linkage pages.

Future plans include linking economic records to all four of our studies as well as linking criminal justice records and higher education data (UCAS and HESA) to the Millennium Cohort Study and Next Steps.

Training and support

We run webinars for researchers who would like to find out more about our linked data. Check our events page for details and to sign up for emails about our upcoming webinars. You can also watch recordings of previous webinars on our Training and support page.

For any questions about our data linkage programme, please get in touch with our team at clsrecordslinkage@ucl.ac.uk.