Our studiesKeywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, school, education, employment, training, apprenticeship.
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.
Angelika Hibbett and Ken Fogelman expand on Hibbett’s earlier CLS Working Paper (CLS WP 1987/5) to include other covariates in accounting for the effects of truancy: social class during primary school, rate of school attendance and qualification level.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, social class, SES, class mobility, school-attendance, truanting.
Mayer Ghodsian and Ken Fogelman look at social class factors and housing during childhood as predictors of type of housing and age at marriage in early-adulthood: overcrowding, amenities and equivalent family net income.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, housing, social class, SES, class mobility, marriage, overcrowding, deprivation.
Chris Power, Orly Manor, John Fox and Ken Fogelman observe that self-rated health and emotional health were generally poorer in lower social classes. But some reductions in class differences occurred when adjustment was made for ill-health in adolescence. They examine to what extent those unhealthy-in-adolescence move down the social scale in comparison to healthier adolescents.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, selection effect, social class, SES, class mobility.
Ken Fogelman follows up analyses of data on the NCDS 1958 cohort which had shown that effects of smoking in pregnancy on physical and intellectual development contained differences in outcome between boys ands girsl which were small and might be explained by other factors. The analyses had taken account of birth weight and have therefore examined the effects of smoking on subsequent development in addition to this variable. To assess the importance of smoking on development in early adult life and whether the effect is independent of birth weight, data from the age 23 folow-up were analysed. Only weak evidence for a relation between smoking in pregnancy and self reported height of the offspring was apparent once social class, size of family, mothers’ height, and birth weight for gestational age were taken into account. After omission of birth weight from the analyses, however, the average difference in height between subjects whose mothers smoked 20 cigarettes a day or more during the second half of pregnancy and those whose mothers did not was 0.93 cm in men and 1.83 cm in women. A strong association was also evident with the highest qualification achieved by subjects at this age, suggesting a long term relation between smoking in pregnancy and the intellectual development of the offspring.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, smoking, birthweight, social class, physical and intellectual development.
John Fox and Ken Fogelmanargue that, in the planning of the next follow-up of the NCDS 1958 cohort, questions should be included about other members of the immediate family (eg children of the cohort members) in order to shed more light on the influences of family and inter-generational factors in child health and development.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, social mobility, housing tenure, SES, social class, inter-generational analysis.
Angelika Hibbett finds that truancy in th NCDS 1958 cohort is associated with lower status occupations, less stable career patterns and more unemployment. Among those who were working, former truants’ incomes were not lower, but they were considerably less well off once their family situation was taken into account. Differences remained after controlling for the effects of social background, educational ability, poor attendance due to other reasons, and end-of-school qualifications. The conclusoin is that truancy is a predictor of employment problems, and of a more severe kind than will be experienced by others who share the disadvantaged background and low attainment which typify the truant.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, unemployment, jobs, truancy, non-school-attendance.
Ken Fogelman, Chris Power and John Fox expand their earlier paper (CLS WP 1986/2: health & social mobility during the early years of life) to include outcomes in the NCDS 1958 cohort up to the age of 23. They investigate the effects on health of social mobility, both inter- and intra-generational.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, social mobility, housing tenure, SES, social class.
Joan Payne argues that widespread unemployment and fundamental changes in occupational structure have caused trade union membership to fall in Britain from 1979 to the mid-1980s. In response the unions have made efforts to recruit among groups which in the past they have treated as marginal. Announcing a new recruitment drive, the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union stated,’Our new unionism will address itself to the problems of temporary and part-time workers, women, young people and ethnic eminorities.’ This paper aims to report on whether trade unionism among young people has markedly increased.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, undmeployment, job structure, trade union
Marian Annett explains that the right shift (RS) theory suggests the main determinant of handendess, as in other mammals, is chance. The chances are biased toward right-handedness in humans as a by-product of a single gene (ggi) which gives some advantage to the left hemisphere for speech development; in the absence of the gene, brainedness and handedness depend on chance alone, and chances which are independent.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, left-right handedness, environment.
Ken Fogelman, John Fox and Chris Power use housing tenure as an index of socio-economic status to look at the relaionships between socio-economic differences in health at 23 and socio-economic circumstances earlier in life. By focussing separately on subjects whose circumstances changed and those whose circumstances remained stable they investigate whether health~ related mobility occurs, its magnitude and its importance to future outcomes.
Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, health, school, education, social class, SES, housing tenure, social mobility.
The NCDS4 Research Team outline the methodology of the age 23 follow-up of NCDS, and provide a summary of the early research results in a variety of areas such as housing, employment, education, health, apprenticeship etc.
The methodology section involves preparation and piloting; tracing and arrangements for interviewing; interviewing and tacing by interviewers; coding, data-checking and editing; response patterns and their implications.
Joan Payne uses data from the National Child Development Study to compare the progress up to age 23 of young people who reached 16 in March 1974 and who left full time education at 16, 17 or 18. Later leavers had higher unemployment rates on first entering the labour market because of rising national unemployment, but in the long term had a clear advantage. Those who left at 17 or 18 with qualifications no better than those of minimum age leavers suffered no long term disadvantage in comparison with the latter, despite their loss of potential work experience, and some groups had lower unemployment rates in the long term than minimum age leavers with equally good qualifications. Apprenticeships were more common among later leavers than expected, and later leavers compared favourably with early leavers in terms of other forms of in?work training. It is concluded that the ‘non?academic sixth’ could have a useful role alongside YTS.
Find the latest developments and insights from across all our longitudinal studies.
Our 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
