The Age 34 Survey took place between February 2004 and June 2005. Just under 10,000 of you took part.
What we asked
The Age 34 Survey involved a 50-minute interview that covered household composition, housing, marital status and partnerships, periods of lone parenthood, children and wider family, employment, family income, academic education, vocational and other training, computer use, basic skills, general health, diet and exercise, height and weight, voting behaviour, attitudes, alcohol consumption, wellbeing, experience of crime and satisfaction with life.
A basic skills assessment was also included which aimed to measure literacy and numeracy levels in adulthood.
For those of you who were parents by 34 there were a number of further elements:
- The ‘Parent and Child’ interview, which was added to the main interview and asked about your child’s physical and mental health, any periods of separation from you, pre-school care, current education and your aspirations for their future.
- You also completed a paper questionnaire about each of your children, which asked (depending on the child’s age) about parenting styles, physical and cognitive development, your relationship with the child, their behaviour and their schooling.
- If your children were aged over 3, they were asked to complete a number of age-appropriate tests. These were similar to some of the tests that you had taken when you were children – so that we could look at how ability is passed from one generation to the next.
- Children aged between 10 and 16 were also asked to complete a paper questionnaire which asked about their leisure activities, their relationship with their parents, their attitudes to school and aspirations for the future, their self-esteem, smoking, drinking, drug use and experience of petty crime.
