Webinar

This one–hour webinar recording introduces users to the Age 62 Sweep – the most comprehensive data collection in adulthood in the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), and the first to feature objective health measures in nearly 20 years. Join us to explore this major new research resource.  

Webinar recording and slides

This webinar took place on Thursday, 17 July 2025.

You can download a PDF of the 1958 National Child Development Study at age 62: explore the new data webinar slides here.

About the event

Over 8,000 cohort members took part in the NCDS Age 62 Sweep, providing a detailed picture of their lives as they approached State Pension age. This webinar recording will take you through the wide range of information collected in this major sweep and some of the opportunities to use it in conjunction with the rich longitudinal data collected over more than 60 years.

Highlights at Age 62 include:

Health: a health professional took objective measures of blood pressure, grip strength, balance, weight, waist and hip circumference, and walking pace. Details of prescribed medications were recorded and blood samples were taken to extract a wide variety of biomarkers, some of which are brand new in NCDS. These include cholesterol, glycated haemoglobin, cardiovascular health markers and metabolomics such as fatty or amino acids.

Cognitive function: cohort members repeated four tasks, last completed at age 50.

Financial resources, work and retirement: information was collected on income, pensions, and savings. Cohort members were also asked about working in later life, retirement and expectations for the future. 

What’s covered in the event recording?

  • A guide to what’s in the data, including new and repeated measures.
  • Research questions the data could answer.
  • Information on accessing the data (soon to be released from the UK Data Service).
  • Data collection and the mixed mode design, documentation and non response weights.

Who should watch the recording?

The rich new data will be useful for exploring a wide range of topics, including employment, pensions and finances, health and wellbeing, cognition, and family and relationships. It will be particularly helpful for understanding the lifelong factors affecting retirement and ageing.  

Why watch?

  • Get an overview of the wide range of information captured in the Age 62 Sweep.
  • Explore the special features of the data, including the objective health measures, the cognitive assessments, and the self-completion questionnaires about childhood and life today.
  • Learn about the weights, data structure, documentation and how to access the data.

Which studies are covered?

1958 National Child Development Study, following the lives of an initial 17,415 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1958.   

Who is presenting?

  • Vanessa Moulton is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
  • Carole Sanchez is a Survey Manager at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
  • Sam Parsons is a Principal Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
  • George Ploubidis is Director of BCS70 and NCDS, and Professor of Population Health and Statistics at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies.