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

What children write about may predict future mental health

24 May 2024

Children who express positive thoughts and feelings in their creative writing are less likely to show symptoms of depression at the age of 23, according to research led by Chapman University in California.  

News

Poor mental health doubled likelihood of experiencing financial hardship during pandemic

19 January 2023

Up to one in five adults with a history of poor mental health reported they were ‘much worse off’ financially a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to one in ten of those who had never had psychological problems in adulthood.

50 stories

Important discoveries from the 1970 British Cohort Study – Midlife mental health

4 February 2021

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) has been an important source of evidence on midlife mental health, helping to improve our understanding about why middle age is such a vulnerable period for adults.

News

Up to a fifth of adults have mental health problems in midlife

21 January 2021

Baby Boomers and Generation X are at the greatest risk of mental ill-health in middle age, finds new research by UCL.

News

Older fathers now tend to be healthiest in middle age, research finds

2 October 2019

Over the years, men who waited until their mid-20s to have their first child tended to report the best health in middle age, compared to those who started a family earlier. But, more recently, those who delayed fatherhood until their mid-30s appeared to be the healthiest in midlife.

News

Happy children tend to become happy adults, research finds

20 September 2019

Among the Baby Boomers and Generation X, people who had higher levels of emotional wellbeing during childhood and adolescence were more likely to report being satisfied with life when they reached adulthood.

Harmonising mental health measurements from the British birth cohorts

23 April 2019

At this event, organised by CLOSER, we will present results on the measurement properties of mental health measures, before and after harmonising these so that they can be compared across time and study.

Train the trainer: a workshop to explore longitudinal data to inform your teaching in quantitative social science subjects

23 April 2019

CLS are pleased to be presenting at this CLOSER workshop aimed at lecturers. This free one-day workshop will give an overview of longitudinal data available to lecturers who teach and supervise students in quantitative social science subjects.

Longitudinal data across the life course: an introduction to using cohort data

29 March 2019

Held at the University of Edinburgh, this workshop gave both first-time and more experienced data users an insight into four of the UK’s internationally-renowned cohort studies run by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). The slides from this workshop are available to download from this page.

News

The story of our lives: new short film celebrates the first 60 years of the National Child Development Study

11 March 2019

The National Child Development Study (NCDS) is “one of the most influential pools of data that possibly the world has ever seen”, explains the former Labour minister and chair of the Social Mobility Commission, Alan Milburn, in a new short documentary film from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS).

News, Data release

Latest partnership histories dataset now available

30 November 2017

The latest version of the National Child Development Study: Partnership Histories (1974-2013) has been released at the UK Data Service.

News

Health ‘benefits’ of moderate drinking may be overstated, study finds

22 May 2017

Researchers have called into question the apparent benefits of light alcohol consumption – as well as the supposed ‘risks’ of not drinking – after examining the drinking habits of middle-aged Britons.

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Phone: 020 7612 6516
Email: r.bradshaw@ucl.ac.uk

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