The birth survey

To celebrate 50 years of BCS70, over the course of the year we’ll be highlighting interesting features of the study’s design, delving deeper into the questionnaires and pulling out descriptive statistics from the data.

The 1970 British Cohort Study followed a similar sample design as the 1958 National Child Development Study, recruiting all children born in England, Scotland and Wales during a single week in 1970 – around 17,000 babies. Like NCDS, BCS70 is a representative sample of a generation of British people.

Find out more about the birth survey.