Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)

Summary

The original objectives of the first MCS survey, as laid down in the proposal to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in March 2000, were: • to chart the initial conditions of social, economic and health advantages and disadvantages facing children born at the start of the 21st century, capturing information that the research community of the future will require • to provide a basis for comparing patterns of development with the preceding cohorts (the National Child Development Study and the 1970 Birth Cohort Study) • to collect information on previously neglected topics, such as fathers' involvement in children's care and development • to focus on parents as the most immediate elements of the children's 'background', charting their experience as mothers and fathers of newborn babies in the year 2000, recording how they (and any other children in the family) adapted to the newcomer, and what their aspirations for her/his future may be • to emphasise intergenerational links including those back to the parents' own childhood • to investigate the wider social ecology of the family, including social networks, civic engagement and community facilities and services, splicing in geo-coded data when available Additional objectives subsequently included for MCS were: • to provide control cases for the national evaluation of Sure Start (a government programme intended to alleviate child poverty and social exclusion) • to provide samples of adequate size to analyse and compare the smaller countries of the United Kingdom

Type of data

Data Source
Registry + Survey

Type of Study
Cohort study

Data gathering method
Face-to-face
Self administered questionnaire
Other: Face-to-face interview; Self-completion; Psychological measurements; Educational measurements; Observation; Physical measurements For more information, see the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) website: http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/default.aspx

Access to data

Conditions of access
Data are available from the UK Data Service (previously the Economic and Social Data Service, ESDS): http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/ The website contains detailed information on conditions of access, and it is also possible to contact the UK Data Service by phone: +44 (0)1206 872143, or by email: help@ukdataservice.ac.uk

Type of available data (e.g. anonymised microdata, aggregated tables, etc.)
Anonymised microdata

Formats available
Data from the UK Data Service are usually available to download in SPSS, Stata and tab-delimited (suitable for use in MS Excel) formats.

Coverage

Coverage Years of collection, reference years, and sample sizes
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a multi-disciplinary research project following the lives of around 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000/1. Parents were initially recruited from Child Benefit records. The study has been tracking the children through their early childhood years and plans to follow them into adulthood. There have been four surveys of MCS cohort members carried out so far, at nine months (2000/01), three years (2004/05), five years (2006) and seven years (2008). The next study is planned for 2012. The first sweep (MCS1) interviewed both mothers and (where resident) fathers (or father-figures) of infants included in the sample when the babies were nine months old, and the second sweep (MCS2) was carried out with the same respondents when the children were three years of age. The third sweep (MCS3) was conducted in 2006, when the children were aged five years, and the fourth sweep (MCS4) in 2008, when they were seven years old. Some studies based on sub-samples of MCS have also been conducted, including a study of MCS respondent mothers who had received assisted fertility treatment, conducted in 2003. Also, birth registration and maternity hospital episodes for the MCS respondents are held as a separate dataset. MCS is fourth in a long line of cohort studies in the UK but is distinguished from them in a number of ways related to the design of the sample. Its carefully constructed sample (19,517 children in 19,244 families selected through Child Benefit Records) was designed to provide a proper representation of the total population. However, certain sub-groups were intentionally over-sampled, in particular those living in disadvantaged circumstances, children from minority ethnic backgrounds (in England), and youngsters growing up in the smaller countries of the UK, namely Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As the MCS children were born between September 2000 and January 2002 the study is also well-placed to identify any season-of-birth effect on children’s development.

First year of collection
2000

Stratification if applicable
The data includes a variety of demographic variables, including age and sex. The sample is stratified.

Base used for sampling

Geographical coverage and breakdowns
UK

Age range
The age of birth cohort study members varies over time. At the last wave of data collection, cohort members were 7 years old.

Statistical representativeness
Other, please specify

Coverage of main and cross-cutting topics
A renewed interest in child wellbeing in the late 1990s in the UK provided the context for the development of a new and distinctive child cohort study, after a gap of 30 years. The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) was developed as a multidisciplinary survey which could capture the influence of early family context on child development and outcomes throughout childhood, into adolescence and subsequently through adulthood. The study's field of enquiry covers such diverse topics as parenting; childcare; school choice; child behaviour and cognitive development; child and parental health; parents’ employment and education; income and poverty; housing, neighbourhood and residential mobility; and social capital and ethnicity.

Linkage

Standardisation
There is an ongoing cross-governmental programme of work in the UK which aims to develop and improve standardised inputs and outputs for use in official statistics. This is known as harmonisation, and is led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). While this work primarily affects government-run surveys, the results have an impact on most national UK data sources. Furthermore, harmonisation has important benefits for all researchers using these surveys, and not just government statisticians. For more information, see: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/harmonisation/harmonisation-index-page/index.html

Possibility of linkage among databases
Data are anonymised

Data quality

Entry errors if applicable
In addition to unit non-response and attrition, the data include item non-response and may be subject to other errors that are typical of cohort studies. There are incomplete data for some individuals in some waves. For more information on data quality, see the survey documentation on the UK Data Service website.

Breaks
There are no major breaks for this data source, although different data has been gathered at different time-points over the life of the birth cohort.

Consistency of terminology or coding used during collection
In general, the consistency of this data source is good. For more information on data quality, see the survey documentation on the UK Data Service website.

Governance

Contact information
Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education
University of London
20 Bedford Way
WC1H 0AL London United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)207 612 6875
Email: cls(at)ioe.ac.uk
Url: http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/

Timeliness, transparency
Timetables vary according to the data collected in each wave