About Generation New Era
Generation New Era is a groundbreaking scientific study of several thousand babies born in 2022/23, and their families. It aims to follow the lives of this new generation as they grow up in our changing world. By providing vital new insights into the health and development of children, Generation New Era will help researchers, governments and service providers to improve the lives of children and families in the UK.
Generation New Era will be the first UK-wide study of its kind for over 20 years.
About the UK’s birth cohort studies
Generation New Era is a special kind of study called a birth cohort study. These studies follow children from birth throughout their lives. They show how children grow and develop, and how childhood experiences affect later lives.
The UK is a world leader in this kind of research, with national studies of people born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000 still running today. These studies have followed the lives of over 60,000 people: through early life, school, leaving home, getting a job and starting a family of their own.
About the management and funding of the study
The Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), at University College London (UCL), is in charge of the study. CLS is the UK’s leading cohort studies research centre, including running the birth cohorts born in 1958, 1970 and 2000. They were chosen to run the study because they are experts in this kind of research. UCL is one of the world’s leading universities.
The study team also includes Swansea University in Wales, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Ulster University in Northern Ireland.
Ipsos is carrying out the interviews for Generation New Era. Ipsos is an independent research
organisation that follows the rules of the Market Research Society Code of Conduct. Their survey interviewers are specially trained and carefully chosen to work on this study. Ipsos was chosen to collect the information for the study as they have lots of experience in carrying out similar studies with children and families.
Generation New Era is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the UK’s leading academic funder of social research and part of UK Research and Innovation. The ESRC also pays for several of the UK’s other cohort studies.
Read more about some of the key people working on the study on our meet the team page
About the families invited to be part of Generation New Era
The families chosen for the study reflect the diversity of families within each region, country and across the UK as a whole.
The study only includes babies born in November and December 2022 in England, Wales and Scotland, and June/July 2023 in Northern Ireland. Only 250 areas within the UK were chosen for the study. Babies born in these areas are chosen to be representative of all those born in the UK in 2022.
Only a few thousand families have the opportunity to be part of Generation New Era. Each family chosen for the study is unique and cannot be replaced by anyone else.
Families were chosen at random from records of births held by government departments and agencies. These organisations provided the names, addresses and additional information about parents and their babies to Generation New Era. Approval by special committees in each country is needed to allow this.