Our privacy policy

We are committed to keeping your personal information safe.

When you take part in CLS activities or use CLS services, we will tell you how we will use any information you give us. We will also give you the opportunity to tell us not to use your information in these ways.

We comply with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) with regard to the collection, processing, storage and disclosure of personal information.

What this privacy policy covers

This privacy policy explains:

• why and how we use cookies on our website
• how we will use your information if you access our data
• how we will use your contact information to keep you up to date by email on the latest news from CLS
• how we will use your information if you sign up to attend one of our events
• how we will use your information if you complete a CLS online survey.

We may change our privacy policy from time to time. If we do, you will always find the most up to date version here on our website.

In addition, we have special arrangements for protecting the information we collect from participants in our cohort studies.

Participants can find out more here:

1958 National Child Development Study
1970 British Cohort Study
Next Steps
Millennium Cohort Study
COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study
Children of the 2020s
Generation New Era

You can also read our information governance statement for more information.

About us

CLS is home to the UK’s leading national cohort studies. As well as running these studies, we support researchers to use the data in their work.

We also conduct our own research across a wide range of topics. We share findings from cohort research to inform public policy, services and practices that can improve lives.

CLS is an Economic and Social Research Council resource centre based at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. You can find out more about who we are and what we do on our about us page.

Using cookies on our website

When you visit our website, a pop-up will appear asking you to consent to cookies. You do not have to give your consent, and you can find more information about changing your cookie preferences below.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that websites store on your browser. They only include information about your session, not programmes, viruses or malicious software. Cookies normally expire after a certain length of time, although that time can be anywhere from a few minutes to more than a year.

Which cookies do we use on this website?

Find out more about our cookies on the Cookies page.

Accessing our data

You will be asked to provide information about yourself and your project when you apply to access data from our studies. We process your information under the legal basis ‘Public Task’ to carry out our activities as facilitators of scientific research. We will use the information you provide to:

• evaluate how the research community is using the data
• share relevant information and resources to support your current and future work
• to enforce the terms of the access agreements
• authenticate and manage your application, when applying directly to CLS.

Accessing data through the UK Data Service

We make most of the data from our studies available to researchers through the UK Data Service, a secure national repository for social science and health research data.

When you access the data, you will need to agree to the terms of the UK Data Service End User Licence (EUL). Under these terms, the UK Data Service will pass your information to CLS as the Data Depositor to use if we need information about your project, or if you breach the terms of the EUL.

We will send you at least one email each time you download our data from the UK Data Service to remind you of your responsibilities under the EUL, such as citing data and reporting publications. This email will also include links to relevant training or guidance. You can choose to unsubscribe from these emails, however we may still contact you by email if we require information about your project or you breach the terms of the EUL.

You can also choose to subscribe to our email list if you would like to receive information on news, events, training or guidance more regularly.

Accessing data directly from CLS

To access certain cohort study data, you must apply directly to the CLS Data Access Committee. If your application to use the data is approved, you will need to agree to CLS’s data access terms. Under these terms, we will store and process your data authentication, statistical purposes, and for the management of the data request and use.

In addition to emails about your application and project, we may also send you emails when we release relevant new data or other resources. You can choose to unsubscribe from these email notifications, however we will still contact you by email about your application and project, or you breach the terms of the access agreement.

You can also choose to subscribe to our email list if you would like to receive information on news, events, training or guidance more regularly.

Contacting you by email

We manage an email mailing list of people who have either given their consent for us to contact them by email, or who we contact when carrying out tasks in the public interest, including encouraging and facilitating research.

What we will send you

Those on our email list have the option of subscribing to our three newsletters, each sent twice a year:

• CLS Data Update: our twice-yearly essential newsletter for data users of all experience levels. It covers the latest data releases and training events, as well as tips, tools and materials to help you with your data analysis.
• CLS Evidence Update: our twice-yearly digest of the latest research based on our study data spanning health, families, labour markets, cognition, inequalities, and ageing.
• Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study Update: contains the latest information on the progress of the study, including survey design and fieldwork, reports and publications and information about data releases. Updates are sent at key stages of the study progress.

Those on our mailing list will also receive occasional invitations to relevant events and consultations, and other special announcements.

How we store and manage your contact information

We use a third party platform called DotDigital to help us manage our mailing list and to distribute emails. You can read more about DotDigital’s privacy policy on its website.

When you sign up to our mailing list, you will need to provide your name, email address, and your contact preferences. We collect this information using a DotDigital sign-up page and stored in CLS’s DotDigital account. The account is password protected and is only accessible to certain CLS employees.

When we email you, you will always have the option to unsubscribe from future messages or update your preferences and contact details. You can also do this at any other time by visiting the DotDigital Update your preferences page.

If you unsubscribe from our mailing list, you will not receive any further emails from us. However, we may need to retain your email address in our DotDigital account for a period of time to ensure you are not inadvertently resubscribed. We may also remove you from our mailing list if your email address becomes invalid, or you do not open five or more of our emails in a row.

Registering for our events

We hold a range of different events, including training webinars, conferences and research seminars.

Before an event

When you register to attend one of our events, our booking form will ask you for certain information. This includes your name and email address, job title, organisation, your geographic region, and main area of research interest. We may also ask if you have any special dietary or accessibility requirements.

We use a third party platform called DotDigital to take event bookings and to collect this information. You can read more about DotDigital’s privacy policy on its website.

We will use the details you give us to contact you before the event and to follow up with you afterwards. This is likely to include reminders and notifications of any changes to the event, sending you relevant presentations or reports related to the event, as well as asking you to tell us what you thought of the event, so we can keep improving how we do things.

At our academic and policy events, we may choose to distribute hardcopy delegate lists to event attendees to facilitate discussion and networking. The lists include the names, email addresses and organisations of all delegates. We process your information for the delegate list under Public Task. Delegate lists help those attending our events to network effectively with their professional peers. They also encourage collaboration between those who use our longitudinal data and resources in a professional capacity. These activities are a core purpose of CLS academic and policy events.

If we are intending to distribute a delegate list at an event, we will inform you when you register and give you an opportunity to opt out. There is no obligation for you to share your information in this way, and if you change your mind at any time before the event, you can notify ioe.clscomms@ucl.ac.uk to have your details removed.

After an event

After a CLS event, we will collect feedback from you using DotDigital. Feedback surveys are optional and anonymous.

We store information collected from event registration forms and feedback surveys securely on our internal server. These files are password protected and accessible only to CLS employees. We also report some aggregate and deidentified information from event registration forms to our funders and governing bodies. If you have registered for one of our events, we will continue to hold your personal information for evaluation purposes only for the remainder of our current grant period (no more than five years).

If you have registered for one of our events in a professional capacity, we will automatically add you to our mailing list unless you ask us not to. You will have the option to opt-out of our mailing list on the event registration form. If you are unsure whether you opted out, please email ioe.clscomms@ucl.ac.uk.

If you have registered for one of our events as a student or in a personal capacity, we will not automatically add you to our mailing list, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. You can subscribe to our mailing list any time on our sign-up page.

Completing an online survey

We occasionally use online surveys to collect submissions to scientific consultations and conference calls for papers, and as event feedback forms (as described above). Each survey will ask you to provide different information relevant to its purpose, although most will ask for your name, email and organisation. In every survey, we will tell you how we will store and share the information you provide.

How and why we conduct online surveys

We use a third party platform called Microsoft Forms to collect feedback from you. You can read more about Microsoft’s privacy policy on its website.

We also use another third party platform called Qualtrics for this. You can find out more about Qualtrics’ privacy policy on its website.

We store the information collected from our online surveys on our internal server. The files are password protected and accessible only to CLS employees.

We use this information to help shape our future activities. This might include planning the programme of our scientific conferences or developing the content of upcoming sweeps of data collection. We also aggregate information for internal reporting purposes. No individual or identifying information is included in our reports.

How we store and manage the information you give us in an online survey

If you have completed a CLS online survey, we will continue to hold your personal information for internal evaluation purposes for the remainder of our current grant period (no more than five years).

If you have responded to one of our consultations or surveys in a professional capacity, we will automatically add you to our mailing list unless you ask us not to. You will have the option to opt-out of our mailing list on the online submission form. If you are unsure whether you opted out, please email ioe.clscomms@ucl.ac.uk.

If you have responded to one of our consultations or surveys as a student or in a personal capacity, we will not automatically add you to our mailing list, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. You can subscribe to our mailing list any time on our sign-up page.

Your rights

You have a wide range of individual rights under the General Data Protection Regulations, including the right to ask us to update or remove the information we hold about you at any time, or to give you the information we hold about you. Your individual rights include the right to object to the processing of your personal data at any time.

The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change your email address or believe any of the information we hold about you is out of date, please update your preferences or email ioe.clscomms@ucl.ac.uk.

For more information about this, or to make a complaint about how we have handled your data, please contact UCL’s Data Protection Officer: data-protection@ucl.ac.uk.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this policy, or need to contact CLS for any other reason, please visit our contact us page.

Last updated: December 2024