UK launches first study of child development in a generation

The first new UK-wide study of babies in 25 years is about to begin. It’s called Generation New Era, and it will follow more than 30,000 children born in 2026, tracking their health, growth and experiences through their early years, and onwards. The study is led by researchers at University College London, and it’s being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Alissa Goodman is the director of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, and co-director of the Generation New Era study…

Alissa - The UK has a very long tradition of longitudinal birth cohort studies. That's studies of people all born together at a particular time, and they're followed up not just once, but into the future, potentially across the whole of their lives. So we're really excited that there's a new study being launched. They'll be born in 2026. We're going to be enrolling as many as 30,000 families into the study, and we're hoping to do interviews with them in the first year of their life, and again, when they're three years old.

Chris - What are you hoping to learn from a study like this?

Alissa - These birth cohort studies give evidence for both policy and science across a wide range of domains. So we're looking to begin with about the early years and child development very much at its core. How do they form their cognitive skills? How is their social and emotional learning? How is their health? And what are the factors in their family life and in their wider life that contribute to it? As they age, we'll be relating what happens in their childhood and their early years to that.

Chris - How will you recruit these people to make sure that what you get is a snapshot of reality rather than a biased sample?

Alissa - So one of the really important things about this study is that it aims to be nationally representative. The samples are originally drawn from national birth records, and we select families based on getting as random a sample as we can, with certain characteristics boosted. So we're going to be having study boosts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to make sure that we can do analysis that's country-specific as well as from across the UK. And we're going to be boosting families from ethnic minority backgrounds and from low-income areas to make sure that we can really understand issues around ethnicity and low income in particular. Once we've drawn a sample, families will be receiving letters. If you've had a baby in 2026, you may well be receiving letters around next autumn inviting you to take part. And we would really encourage anyone to say yes.

Chris - How do you keep tabs on people across their life course though? Because obviously when you've got little babies, they're plugged into the system. People are highly motivated at the start of a study to get involved in it and stay involved in it. But how do you keep hold of them throughout? And how many people do you expect to lose to follow-up by the time you get to the end of the study?

Alissa - So we will be in touch with the families regularly. People like to take part because they understand the benefits of the study and why it's for the public good. So although inevitably people do move in and out of studies like this, they don't always take part at every sweep. We've been remarkably good at keeping hold of our participants and we hope to do that going forward as well.

Chris - Is this unique in the way it's done or have we got lots of other countries doing similar sorts of things with their populations around the world?

Alissa - The UK is unique in having such a long series of birth cohort studies. So the first one of these in the world was in the UK and it was actually from 1946 and we're still in touch with the 1946 cohort families now in their 70s. In the UK we've then had birth cohorts in 1958, 1970 and the millennium. Around the millennium there was a great flourishing of studies like this from around the world in New Zealand and Australia and Ireland and France and many other countries beyond. Longitudinal studies are a feature of science now around the world in both developed and developing nations.

Chris - Are there any highlights that have emerged from that first cohort, the one that you just mentioned, now in their 70s? Have any things come out of that where you can point to that and say, look at the learning that's emerged, this is why these sorts of studies really matter?

Alissa - For the 1946 cohort it was really the first study of its kind to capture child development in the way that we think about it now in terms of cognitive skills and social and emotional development and really understanding the precursors of health in midlife and in older age. Each of the studies beyond that has changed the world in different ways. So the 1958 cohort was the first one to establish definitively the link between smoking in pregnancy and baby's health and that was incredibly formative for public health policies throughout the 1970s. The millennium cohort has been the first where we've measured growing up through the digital era and it's been incredibly informative for understanding the mental health of this generation in the new environment in which they've grown up, and also some of the different technologies around them that affect their teenage behaviours like smoking and vaping and other things to do with their teenage lives.

Chris - So that you don't die of stress prematurely, how many people have you got to do this? Because 30,000 people to follow up with in-depth interviews, to probe all of the sorts of things you want to probe with this, that's enormous amounts of information and data and just time sitting down with people. How many people have you got working on this?
Alissa - There's going to be hundreds of interviewers up and down the country who become involved in this study, getting busy to do this next year.