Here you can find answers to questions you might have about this first phase of Generation New Era as well as links to some of the booklets we previously sent you. If you have a query that’s not covered here, please do get in touch.
Why isn’t Generation New Era continuing for families who took part in 2023-24?
In 2023-24, we interviewed the families of almost 2,000 babies. This was the first phase of Generation New Era. With your help it was such a success that we have now been asked to make the study much bigger. The plan is to include over 30,000 babies born in 2026 in this next stage.
It’s important for a study like Generation New Era that all of the babies are born in the same year. This means we will be inviting a whole new group of families to take part, so that we can follow their babies’ lives from the beginning.
Sadly, this also means we won’t be following up with the babies in the first phase for now. But if you have had or are expecting a new baby this year, we could be in touch again to invite you to be part of this next exciting stage of the study.
What happens to the information collected in 2023-24?
The information you and other families provided will continue to be used for many years to come, for research that can help improve the lives of children and families in the UK. We sent you a snapshot of findings in our Learning from Generation New Era booklet.
Your answers have been put together with the answers from all the other families we interviewed and are available to researchers securely. The information does not contain any names, addresses, or other personal details that could directly identify anyone in the study.
Your name, address and other contact information will be retained, and like all study information, will be treated in strict confidence and kept securely.
We use your information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will retain it until no longer required by the study. Generation New Era has strict security rules and secure systems to protect your information.
You can find more information about how we look after your information in the study privacy notice.
Will other information be added to Generation New Era?
For now, we don’t have plans to follow up with families who took part in the first phase of Generation New Era in 2023-24. However, in the future, if you gave us permission, we may add information collected by the NHS and other government agencies, about you and your child, to your survey responses. We would add information from health records about you and your child until they are 14 and information from education and social care records about you and your child until they are 16. This will make the study even more useful for understanding the lives of babies and their families and improving public services for everyone. We will only add this information if you have already given your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time if you change your mind about this.
We may also add information about the local area or property where you live. This could be information such as air pollution levels, green spaces, local amenities or the energy efficiency of your home. This sort of data is often publicly available. If you would prefer that we don’t add this to your records, you can let us know at any time.
Please get in touch if you would like to check what consent you have given for us to add information or if you would like to change your consent.
Was genetic information collected?
We asked some of the parents who took part in the first phase of Generation New Era if they would be happy to provide saliva samples, for them and their baby. This was to help us learn more about how genes can influence people’s lives. If you’d like to know more about this, please get in touch.
Booklets
We gave you a range of booklets about taking part in the first phase of Generation New Era. Here are links to PDF versions of some of these.
Be part of Generation New Era
What happens next?
Learning from Generation New Era