Your questions answered

Generation New Era is a groundbreaking scientific study of thousands of babies born in the 2020s, and their families.  

The study will provide vital new insights into children's health and development and help improve the lives of children and families in the UK.  

The first phase of Generation New Era was with children born in 2022/23, and their families. The second phase of Generation New Era will start in 2026 with a new group of families invited to take part. 

Birth cohort 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 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000 still running today. 

These kinds of studies have been vital for providing evidence to change policy and services for children and families in the UK. Several government measures benefiting parents today have been informed by findings from similar studies. For example, extending maternity leave to one year, increasing the weekly rate of statutory maternity pay, and introducing two weeks of paid paternity leave.

You can read more examples on our Making a difference page, or hear about why others like taking part in our Participant stories.

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. 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 carried out the interviews for the first phase of Generation New Era. Ipsos is an independent research organisation that follows the rules of the Market Research Society Code of Conduct. Ipsos was chosen to collect the information for the first phase of 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 (ESRC), the UK’s leading academic funder of social research and part of UK Research and Innovation.  

This research has been reviewed and approved by an NHS Research Ethics Committee. This is an independent group of people committed to protecting your safety, rights, wellbeing and dignity.  

The information is used for research purposes only. Your survey responses will be put together with the answers from all the other people who are interviewed and made securely available for research via the UCL Data Safe Haven, UK Data Service and other secure research environments. 

Sometimes this may include commercial organisations using the data for approved research purposes. This research data does not contain any names, addresses, or other personal details that could directly identify individuals in the study. 

Your study information is treated in strict confidence and kept securely. It is used in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will be retained until no longer required by the study. Generation New Era has strict security rules and secure systems to protect your information.

The data controller for the study is University College London (UCL). A data controller is the organisation that determines for what reason and how personal data is processed. UCL’s legal basis for using your information is for ‘a task in the public interest’ under the General Data Protection Regulation.  

More information about privacy, confidentiality, legal rights and responsibilities, is available on the looking after your information section of this website, including the study’s privacy notice.

If you are concerned about how your personal data is processed for the study you can contact the UCL Data Protection Office via email: data-protection@ucl.ac.uk or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Find more information on the ICO website.

The information you gave will be kept entirely confidential from other members of your family and from organisations who provide services or administer benefits that you or your baby may use or receive.

In very exceptional circumstances your confidentiality may be broken, for example, if something you tell us indicates that someone is at significant risk of harm.

More information about privacy and confidentiality is available on the looking after your information page. 

You have the right to withdraw from the research at any stage, without having to give a reason. If you do withdraw or if we lose touch with you, we will retain and continue to use your study information for research unless you tell us not to.

We will not provide any individual feedback to you about your family or your child. This is because research does not look at results for individuals, but at groups of people. However, we will share overall findings from the study.

The study team at UCL have been asked to make Generation New Era a much, much bigger study. This next phase of Generation New Era will include around 30,000 babies born in 2026, making it over ten times the size of the first phase that you took part in, and the largest national birth cohort study in UK history. 

It’s important for this new phase that all of the babies are born in the same year. Because of this we will need to invite a whole new group of families to take part so that we can follow their babies’ lives from the beginning. We had hoped to be able to invite all families that took part in the first phase of Generation New Era to take part again in the future. However, the huge scale of the new phase of the study means that we are not able to do further interviews with families from the first phase.  

The information you and other families have provided will continue to be used, for many years to come, for research to improve the lives of children and families in the UK. The information is used for research purposes only. Your survey responses will be put together with the answers from all the other people who are interviewed and made securely available for research via the UCL Data Safe Haven, UK Data Service and other secure research environments. 

Sometimes this may include commercial organisations using the data for approved research purposes. This research data does not contain any names, addresses, or other personal details that could directly identify individuals in the study. 

We may also add information from administrative records, if you gave us permission for this, and about your local area or property.  

Your name, address and other contact information will be retained, and like all study information, this will be treated in strict confidence and kept securely.     

Your study information is used in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will be retained 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 this on the looking after your information pages. 

The information you shared about your child and your lives together is hugely important for understanding and improving the lives of families today. The findings from Generation New Era will be published in reports and scientific papers, and may be reported in newspapers, on TV and radio.   

We already sent you a glimpse of some of these findings in our 'Learning from Generation New Era' booklet and we hope to share more in-depth findings on the study website and Instagram in the future.   

If you have any questions about the study, or if you’d like to tell us that you’d prefer us to stop using the information you gave us or to change your permissions about adding information from administrative records, please get in touch using the contact details below or via the contact form on the study website. You can also find more details here about how we use your information and the study’s privacy notice.    

If you took part in 2023/2024, as no further interviews are anticipated, we do not intend to contact you about the study again. If this changes in the future, we may contact you again. Your contact details (and those of other people whose details you provided as part of the study) will be stored securely at CLS for research purposes.  

If you choose to help us to develop the next phase of the study as a parent advisor, we will use your contact details to keep in touch with you about the parent advisory group.    

The next phase of Generation New Era is only possible because of your input, and we hope you enjoyed taking part. If you’re keen to stay involved, we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can make the study even better for the next group of parents who’ll be invited to take part. If you have any suggestions for us, or if you are interested in being a parent advisor to the study, please get in touch.

Families are chosen at random from records of births held by government departments and agencies, who provided your name, address, and additional information about you to Generation New Era. Approval by special committees in each country is needed to allow this.

In England and Wales, this information was provided by NHS England, and approved by the NHS Health Research Authority’s Confidentiality Advisory Group and NHS England’s Independent Group Advising on the Release of Data.

In Scotland, this information was provided by the National Records of Scotland and Public Health Scotland, and approved by the NHS Scotland Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care.

In Northern Ireland, this information was provided from the Northern Ireland Maternity Information Systems.

We are using the information from birth records in England, Wales and Scotland to understand who did and didn’t take part. In Northern Ireland, we will use information from maternity records to understand who did and didn’t take part. This information will only be accessed using a safe setting hosted by the Health and Social Care Business Services Organisation (BSO) and the data will not contain your name and address. 

You can find more information about this on the looking after your information pages.

For the study findings to benefit all kinds of families, we need to hear from many different families, in all nations and regions of the UK. By including families from all backgrounds and cultures, and all kinds of children, we can build a full picture of the lives of this generation and give everyone a chance to be heard.

We interviewed mothers and fathers when their baby is around 9-12 months old. All babies grow and develop differently and change a lot in their first year of life. Therefore, it is important that we visit you at this time to understand these changes, and so we can collect information about different babies at the same age. 

In England, Wales and Scotland, interviewing began in Autumn 2023 and finished by July 2024.

In Northern Ireland, interviews began in April 2024 and finished in September 2024.

We are using the information from birth records in England, Wales and Scotland to understand who did and didn’t take part. In Northern Ireland, we will use information from maternity records to understand who did and didn’t take part. This information will only be accessed using a safe setting hosted by the Health and Social Care Business Services Organisation (BSO) and the data will not contain your name and address. 

You can find more information about this on the looking after your information pages. 

We invited one parent, usually whoever spends the most time with the baby, to complete an interview, usually done in person with an interviewer. 

We asked the other parent to complete a separate shorter interview. This was shorter as we only needed to ask some questions once per baby or household. These interviews were done online, in person and sometimes by telephone.

There are some questions which need to be answered by both parents to get a full picture of your and your child’s life (e.g. details about yourself and your relationship with your child) whereas other questions only need to be asked once per family. For example, details about your home or about your child’s health, diet and development.

We always needed one parent to complete the longer interview, and we suggested that this was done by the parent who spent most time with the baby. If you and your child’s other parent live separately, we asked the parent who lived in the child’s main household to complete the longer interview.

You can read more about what you were asked about and some early findings on our What's Involved page.

You were also asked about adding information from administrative records to your survey responses. You can find out more about this on the adding information page.