Life in Your Early 60s Survey

Update: April 2024

We originally launched this survey in January 2020. We only managed to interview a small number of you before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The survey was restarted in spring 2021 and finished in April 2024.

We were pleased to be able to visit you in person again. We were also grateful to those of you who took part by video call for the first time.

What we asked

The Life in your early 60s survey involved a 90-minute interview and two paper questionnaires.

In your interview, we asked you about, among other things, your partner, your children and other people you live with as family circumstances can have a huge impact on our lives. We also asked about your employment and preparations for retirement. As part of the interview, you may have been asked to complete a series of assessments that look at your memory, concentration, and other aspects of cognitive ability.

Before your interview, asked you to complete a paper questionnaire, which asked you about a variety of areas, including leisure activities, attitudes, health, and expectations of the future.

After your interview, if you agreed to a health visit, a healthcare professional took measures of your weight, waist and hip circumference, blood pressure, balance and your walking pace. We also asked your permission to take a small blood sample to test for levels of cholesterol, glycated haemoglobin, triglycerides and C-reactive protein (CRP).

If you agreed to this, we also asked whether you would like the results of the cholesterol and glycated haemoglobin tests, whether we can extract DNA, and whether we could store your blood sample for future analysis. We hope that with this small blood sample scientists will be able to explore the link between genetics, common diseases, and life history.

At the end of the health visit, we also asked you to complete a very short online questionnaire about what you ate on two specific days following the health visit.

If you are ever asked any questions you are not comfortable answering, you can always skip these. Your comfort in participating in NCDS surveys is very important to us.

Find out more about the Life in your early 60s survey in our FAQs.

Getting help with issues raised in the survey

We hope taking part in our survey has been a positive experience. We know lots of people enjoy taking time out to think about and answer questions about their lives.

But if it leaves you worrying about anything that’s happening in your life, there are organisations you can talk to. Visit our helplines page for more information.