CLOSER Discovery

Sweep 8 was the first survey under the management of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). The aim of the sweep was to increase our understanding of the lives of young adults growing up today, and in particular transitions out of education and into early adult life. The content of the questionnaire was broadened to cover a range of different disciplinary areas, providing greater comparability with the other CLS cohort studies and a baseline for the study of later life outcomes, as well as maintaining comparability with previous sweeps of Next Steps in key areas.

Cohort members answered questions about their education and job training, employment and economic circumstances, housing and family life, physical and emotional health, and risky behaviours. A wide range of administrative data linkage consents were also collected covering health, education, economics and criminal behaviour.

The survey sample design was to contact all cohort members who had ever taken part in any of the previous sweeps of the study (except those who had given a clear refusal or are ineligible). A total of 15,531 cohort members were issued for fieldwork and interviews were completed with 7,707 cohort members, representing a 51% response rate. The majority (62%) of fully productive interviews were achieved via web, 9% via telephone, and 29% of interviews were achieved face-to-face.

Study website: www.cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/next-steps-age-25-sweep

United Kingdom