Our studies
Here you can search our series of working papers, dating back to 1983. These papers use data from our four cohort studies and cover a wide range of topics, from social inequalities and mobility, to physical health, education and cognitive development. Other papers in the series seek to improve the practice of longitudinal research. At the present time, we are only able to accept papers if at least one author is a member of the CLS research team. Some of the working papers below will subsequently have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
For more information about our working papers series, please email us at clsworkingpapers@ucl.ac.uk.
This CLS working paper investigates the effects of a range of time-varying fertility indicators, including pregnancy, and the presence and characteristics of children, on the outcomes of nonmarital unions for two cohorts of British women. The study uses data from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).
Key words: Cohabitation, partnership dissolution, fertility, competing risks, multilevel modelling, simultaneous equation modelling
This CLS working paper provides a comparison of the drinking patterns of members of the 1958 National Child Development Study at Age 33 and members of the 1970 British Cohort Study at age 34. It focuses on the relationships between social class, gender and drinking behaviour and how these may have changed over time.
This CLS working paper analyses the classification of qualifications in social surveys. It uses research that has been conducted uses the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
This CLS working paper describes the preliminary results from an analysis of a sample of essays written by cohort members of the 1058 National Child Development Study (NCDS) at Age 11. The essays are focused on the topic, ‘Imagine you are twenty-five…’ and potentially provide insights into the cohort members’ understanding of adult work roles and family relationships, their views on gender roles, and the ways in which social inequalities are reproduced over time.
This CLS working paper uses data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to address question of whether gender had an impact on
academic self-concept for a cohort of 16-year olds born in 1970, and whether single-sex and selective schooling had any impact on self-concept for boys or girls.
Rebecca Allen examines the proposition that secondary school choice in England has produced a stratified education system, compared to a counterfactual world where pupils are allocated into schools based strictly on proximity via a simulation that exploits the availability of pupil postcodes in the National Pupil Database. Half of all pupils in secondary schools in England do not currently attend their proximity allocation school, but a much smaller proportion (22%) are likely to be active in sorting between non-faith comprehensive schools. School segregation is almost always lower in the proximity counterfactual than in the actual data, confirming that where pupils are sorting themselves into a non-proximity school, it does tend to increase social and ability segregation. The potential to reduce school stratification via a strict proximity allocation is greatest in urban areas and in LEAs with many pupils in grammar and voluntary-aided schools.
Keywords: choice, segregation, secondary schools, school admissions, NPD.
Shirley Dex, Kelly Ward and Heather Joshi review the findings of the Women and Employment Survey over the 25 years of its existence, illustrating how the perception of women’s role has changed greatly over the quarter of a century since 1980.
Keywords: Women and Employment Survey. Cross-Sectional review. Women’s employment.
This CLS working paper uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to examine the diversity of the characteristics and circumstances of British mothers at the start of the twenty-first century. The report explores and interprets the socio-economic profile of the age at motherhood.
Angela Brassett-Grundy and Neville Butler provide an overview of what AD/HD is, take a brief look at some of the current debates surrounding the conceptual and measurement issues associated with AD/HD, and review some of the recent literature with a specific focus on the lifecourse outcomes for individuals diagnosed with AD/HD.
Keywords: ADHD, literature review, lifecourse outcomes.
Angela Brassett-Grundy and Neville Butler use data on over 10,000 individuals from the 1970 British Cohort Study to provide an estimate of the prevalence of childhood AD/HD in a birth cohort and to explore the age-30 outcomes of those with childhood AD/HD.
Items from the Conners rating scale completed by parents and teachers, and the parental Rutter questionnaire were used to identify a group of cohort members with AD/HD symptoms at age Multiple regression analyses using probit specifications were used to ascertain the effect of age-10 AD/HD on twenty-four outcomes measured at age 30, whilst controlling for a large number of the cohort member’s socio-economic, personal and familial characteristics measured at birth and age 5.
Results showed there was a prevalence of AD/HD of 7.4%, in the upper end of the range usually reported. Although boys with AD/HD symptoms at age 10 outnumber girls, the ratio found was lower than much previous research has indicated, at 1.7:1.
Men and women with childhood AD/HD were significantly more likely than their unaffected counterparts to face a wide range of negative outcomes at age 30, spanning domains of education, economic status, housing, relationships, crime and health. These findings held true even when controlling for a number of background personal, familial, social and economic characteristics. Men tended to fare worse than women.
Keywords: ADHD, BCS70, Rutter, Conner’s scale, gender differences.
This CLS working paper describes the disproportionately stratified design of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), based on a sample of electoral wards and the practicalities of implementing it.
This CLS working paper examines the costs and benefits of educating looked after children (LAC). The report aims to provide information on the costs of current arrangements for the education of LAC. It uses data from the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).
Find the latest developments and insights from across all our longitudinal studies.
The CLS Bibliography is a searchable database of published work based on our cohort studies. Search by keyword, author, date range and journal.
Data from our studies are mainly available through the UK Data Service. We run training to support researchers who are interested in using our studies in their work.
Centre for Longitudinal Studies
UCL Social Research Institute
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk
