The Millennium Cohort Study Sweep 6 (Age 14) Survey

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a unique, multidisciplinary research resource. Following the lives of over 19,000 children born across the UK around the turn of the millennium, it builds on the UK's rich, and unequalled, array of cohort studies. With collection of information at ages 9 months, 3, 5, 7 and 11 years, it enables analysis of change in children's lives and of the processes that influence them as they grow up.

The MCS has provided a resource for research across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas. It has used a variety of data collection methods and instruments, as well as data linkage to enable research and policy agendas in areas ranging from obesity to school choice; from the emergence of socio-economic differences in cognitive functioning to ethnic differences in breast-feeding; from the impacts of maternal employment to father's involvement in children's activities; from home learning environment to physical activity; from patterns of behavioural difficulties to changes in family structure over the early years.

MCS has already shown clear policy impacts; and it has influenced the design and development of birth cohort studies in other countries, including New Zealand, Ireland and France, as well as the new British birth cohort study. It is widely used not only in UK-based research, but internationally. The reputation and significance of the MCS is well-established and is set to increase in coming years.

The current proposal is for a further survey of the MCS cohort at age 14 as a critical point in young people's lives, both in terms of their development and education. In doing this it builds on the accumulation of information collected at key developmental stages of the cohort members. It is important scientifically because it is a time when people are in-between childhood and adulthood, when many trajectories are still possible, but many will also be heavily influenced by the choices and behaviours they engage in at this age. It is a time when we can see the outcome of early childhood indicators; while, looking forward, age 14 will constitute a point at which teenage paths can diverge through disengagement and different educational aspirations and choices. The measures we capture at age 14 will be significant for addressing the relation to later life outcomes and enabling understanding of change over time through cross-cohort comparisons. The age 14 sweep is also important in data collection terms, since it may be the last sweep at which the cohort members are surveyed at their parental home. At the same time, it is an age when direct engagement of the respondents themselves, distinct from their families, is crucial to the long-term viability of the study.

Like earlier sweeps, the age 14 sweep plans to combine continuity with previous sweeps, comparability with other surveys, and innovation in its selection of measures. It will do this through a variety of data collection instruments comprising interviews and self-completion with both parents; interview and self-completion with the cohort member; measures of height, weight and body fat; direct assessments of cognitive functioning; teacher perspectives on the cohort child and the school context; a time diary to record the child's daily activities; and collection of consent to enable the survey data to be complemented and amplified through administrative data linkage.

Through careful development; rigorous data collection; high quality data deposit; comprehensive dissemination, capacity building and user engagement, MCS6 will provide enormous scientific and policy relevant potential and will consolidate the study's national and international reach and reputation.

The Millennium Cohort Study is a multi-disciplinary survey covering a wide range of topics. The breadth of coverage and the depth of information from six sweeps of data covering UK children's lives up to age 14 make it of interest to a wide range of beneficiaries.
Academics from numerous disciplines, including child health, psychology, economics, epidemiology, human geography, sociology, social policy and social statistics will benefit from clean, high quality and well documented longitudinal data, covering issues of salience throughout childhood and in the teenage years. Supplementary data sets incorporating geographical identifiers or linked administrative data will increase their benefit. MCS6 will be of interest not only to UK but also international scholars, whether for comparative studies with, for example Fragile Families or the NLSY, or in its own right as a unique source for understanding children's development trajectories.
Students will also benefit from the availability of high quality and wide ranging data. They will also be able to draw on the associated training and capacity building activities and the user support linked to the study.
Those developing cohort studies whether from birth (such as the new UK Birth Cohort Study) or in the teen years (such as Tokyo Teen study) will benefit from examplars with which to harmonise as well as being able to draw on the longitudinal expertise linked to the study and gain advice on sampling, instrument development, tracing, participant engagement and ethics.
Methodologists will be able to utilise the data to explore issues such as attrition, non-response and consent in a longitudinal context. For example, by age 14 the number of sweeps, and the changes in inter-sweep periods, facilitates complex modeling of patterns of participation. Survey methodologists and survey practitioners will also benefit indirectly from the methodological research associated with the age 14 sweep such as experimentation on responses to well-being questions a field experiment relating to maximising response, and the dissemination of this research to academic and practitioner audiences
Policy makers will largely benefit indirectly through research findings that are relevant to their areas of interest. The coverage of the age 14 survey both on its own and as a culmination of six sweeps of data collection will be of interest to policy officers and analysts across Whitehall as well as in the devolved administrations. The MCS will provide them with a unique understanding of how children are growing up in the UK today, their different starting points, outcomes and trajectories across a range of highly relevant areas including health, education, family context and change, attitudes, aspirations, sporting and cultural participation, friendship and victimisation, and risk behaviours and attitudes. Policy makers can also benefit directly through analysts' access to the data, and through provision of bespoke data sets to ease use of the complex data for specific purposes.
The MCS is of great interest to a number of voluntary sector organisations, particularly those concerned with parenting and child welfare. It provides an invaluable resource for research connected to their key interests, whether in shared care, maternal depression, 'good parenting', child poverty; disabled children or educational development. The age 14 sweep will increase the interest of MCS to these research consumers. Again, for those with analytical capacity the data can be used directly to explore key concerns; and collaborations with data analysts are also possible, through, for example the ESRC secondary analysis scheme.
Finally, the age 14 sweep will be of indirect benefit to children and families themselves as research on the study identifies what factors in family context and behaviours make a difference to child outcomes, and points to ways in which they can be supported and their experiences enhanced in the future.