News and opinion

Welcome to our news and blogs section. Here you’ll find the latest developments and insights from across our longitudinal studies.

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News

Welsh Government’s Early Years and Childcare Plan draws on evidence from the British birth cohort studies

18 July 2013

Evidence from the 1958, 1970 and millennium cohort studies has been cited extensively by the Welsh Government in its first Early Years and Childcare Plan.

News

Irregular bedtimes curb young children’s brain power, new research suggests

9 July 2013

Going to bed at different times every night curbs children’s brain power and may affect health in adult life, suggests new research using Millennium Cohort Study data. Researchers at University College London (UCL) looked at whether bedtimes in early childhood were related to brain power in more than 11,000 seven-year-olds. They compared the children’s bedtimes […]

News

Children’s cognitive abilities relatively unaffected by having working mothers, latest analysis shows

11 June 2013

Children’s literacy, maths ability and behaviour are not on average harmed if their mothers go out to work during the first years of their lives, a leading researcher said today. Data from earlier UK studies had indicated a small disadvantage in literacy among children born before the mid-1990s whose mothers had worked in their early […]

News

Social mobility depends on parents’ education and social class, not parenting styles, study finds

13 May 2013

Parents’ qualifications, social class and wellbeing have a bigger effect on their children’s development than poor parenting, according to researchers from the Institute of Education, University of London. A new study based on data from almost 14,000 seven-year-olds included in the Millennium Cohort Study has explored the link between children’s cognitive ability and their social and […]

News

Poor attainment of summer-born pupils limits their options for higher education, study suggests

10 May 2013

August-born pupils achieve worse exam results, on average, than children born in September, simply because they are 11 months younger when they sit national achievement tests, a new study finds. Researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, the Labour […]

News

Light drinking in pregnancy does not harm babies, new evidence suggests

17 April 2013

Light drinking during pregnancy does not affect a child’s behavioural or mental development, according to new research using data from the Millennium Cohort Study

News

More than three hours of TV a day linked to anti-social behaviour in children

10 April 2013

Children are at increased risk of behaviour problems if they spend three or more hours a day watching television, an analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study reveals.

News

Ability grouping in primary school may reinforce disadvantage of summer-born children, study finds

8 April 2013

Ability grouping may be intensifying the disadvantages experienced by summer-born children, new research suggests.

Linking cohort study data to administrative records: the challenges of consent and coverage

1 April 2013

Using linked data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), this research project examined patterns of non-consent and non-coverage, and identifies weighting and imputation techniques that can adjust for biases.

News

CLS tests new methods of collecting DNA samples from children

28 March 2013

New methods of collecting DNA using saliva samples could help enhance cohort datasets with valuable biological information, a new study suggests. Researchers at the Institute of Education‘s Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) and Ipsos MORI tested the viability of collecting saliva from 11-year-olds and their natural mothers and fathers. They found that most children and […]

News

Mother’s age, education and ethnicity can predict operative birth, study finds

26 March 2013

Social and demographic factors such as mother’s age, education level and ethnicity can predict the likelihood of having an operative birth, according to new research based on the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).

News

Dad tends to be taller than mum, study finds

28 January 2013

Height differences between MCS parents suggest women may prefer their men to be taller than them – but not too much taller – according to a new study from Groningen University.

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