The National Child Development Study (NCDS) is following the lives of more than 17,000 people born across England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1958. Over the course of your lives, we have collected information on your health, your physical, cognitive and social development, your education and employment, your home lives, and your social participation and attitudes.
The generation born in 1958 experienced some of the most significant changes to everyday life that Britain has ever seen. The purpose of NCDS is to document the lives of your very special generation, and to learn from your experiences.
NCDS was set up originally to help doctors understand why some babies were born with health problems and why some died so early in life. Since then the study has developed into the world’s leading source of information on what life is like for your generation.
NCDS is run by an organisation called the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the UCL Social Research Institute. It’s funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Managing a study as big as NCDS requires many different jobs – our team is made up of researchers, survey specialists, data managers, administrators and communications staff.
To say thank you for everything you’ve given to the study over so many years, we sent you a copy of a special book, looking back at the first 60 years of NCDS.
