What’s involved?

What will taking part involve?

If your family is selected to take part in Generation New Era, you’ll receive a letter about this when your baby is around 9 months old.   

If you’re happy to take part, one of our specially trained interviewers will visit you to find out about your life with your baby. It’s important that we hear from dads as well as mums as this helps us build a full picture of each child’s life. This includes parents who might live apart from their baby’s other parent, whatever involvement they have with their baby.

One parent, usually whoever spends the most time with your baby, will complete the longer interview. Usually this will be done in person with a trained interviewer.

We will ask the other parent to complete a separate interview. This will be shorter as we only need to ask some questions once per baby or household. These shorter interviews can be done online, in person or by telephone.

We will interview parents who live with their baby first but will also interview parents who are living separately to their baby.

The interviews will be carried out by three independent research organisations – Ipsos, Verian and Natcen. If you prefer to not take part, you can let us know and we won’t contact you again. 

What will the interview cover?

We will ask you about your baby’s health and growth, behaviour and development, sleep, diet and the activities you do with your baby. There will also be questions about your experiences as a mother or father as well as other aspects of your life and about your family.  

You will also have the option to download a free smartphone app designed to help parents capture their child’s learning and development, keep memories of their child growing up, and help scientists study child development at the same time.  

When we interview you, we’ll also ask for permission to be able to add information from health, education and social care records about you and your baby to the information you’ve given us. This will mean we have an even more complete record of your baby’s life and will help make the study an even more valuable source of evidence on the experiences of young families today.  

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