Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) began in 1970 when data were collected about the births and families of babies born in the United Kingdom in one particular week in 1970. Since then, there have been nine further full data collection exercises in order to monitor the cohort members' health, education, social and economic circumstances. These took place when respondents were aged 5 in 1975, aged 10 in 1980, aged 16 in 1986, aged 26 in 1996, aged 30 in 1999-2000 (SN 5558), aged 34 in 2004-2005, aged 42 in 2012 and aged 46 in 2016-18. A range of sub-studies has also been conducted, including SN 4715, 1970 British Cohort Study: Age 21 Sample Survey, 1992 and SN 7064, 1970 British Cohort Study: Age 10, Sweep 3 Special Needs Survey, 1980Further information about the BCS70 and may be found on the Centre for Longitudinal Studies website. As well as BCS70, the CLS now also conducts the NCDS series.
1970 British Cohort Study: Age 10, Sweep 3 Special Needs Survey, 1980One particular concern on the educational side of the BCS70 Sweep 3 (see SN 3723), when respondents were aged 10 years, was to gather information on educational attainment on children who were unlikely to be able to complete the educational attainment tests administered at ten years. Teachers were given the option of electing to ask for a Special Educational Pack with easier tests for any child for whom they considered the standard testing too hard. The other criteria for selecting children for the receipt of Special Educational Packs included children who had completed the ordinary pack but had scored in the bottom 5 per cent on the Edinburgh Reading Test and/or the Friendly Maths Test. All children receiving Special Educational Treatment (SET) were also sent a Special Educational Pack. Each Special Educational Pack contained the standard educational test material which teachers were asked to try with the child in order to know where the child fitted within the lower end of the distributions of the standard pack test scores. Survey instrumentation for Sweep 3 was distributed through education and health authorities. The Special Needs Tests were included in the materials distributed through Local Education Authorities and, where parental consent was obtained, administered to cohort members in school with the assistance of teachers. For the second edition (June 2016) a small number of primary identifiers (BCSID) have been changed to realign them to previous sweeps of data. See the documentation for full details of the work done.
Main Topics:
The data cover: respondents' literacy, numeracy and educational attainment; medical and educational help received; behaviour and emotional states; parental role and family environment; psychological and educational tests.
The main survey covered all members of the BCS70 cohort who could be traced were included in the sample, plus their parents and teachers. See documentation for details of how respondents were subsequently included in the Special Educational Needs sample.
Psychological measurements
Educational measurements
See SN 3723 for details of the main survey data collection methods.
