Films from NSHD

As part of the MRC Festival of Medical Research, the MRC National Survey of Health and Development and Children of the 90s joined together to create a film to celebrate their 70th and 25th anniversaries.

This innovative short film brings together study members from the two world-renowned birth cohort studies to discuss the importance of longitudinal research. The study members discuss their memories of being involved in the study, their reasons for continued participation and their ideas for future resear

In 2018 the Green Man festival in the Brecon Beacons, celebrated the 10^th birthday of Einstein’s Garden – an area dedicated to making science and nature an inspiring part of the festival experience.  As part of this, with funding from MRC, researchers from UCL partnered with fanSHEN theatre company to create an activity to engage the public with findings from longitudinal life course research. The scientific team was made up of research scientists, clinicians and research nurses; making them well placed to show case the variety of research that occurs from life course studies.

The successful collaboration led to the development of “Life Course golf course”; part crazy golf, part insight into research from longitudinal cohort studies. In this activity, festival goers were recruited into the life course-themed six-hole golf course. Their caddy (research scientists) navigated them through the ‘life course golf course’ by discussing and describing how studying birth cohorts have helped us to understand how early life factors can affect later health outcomes.

Researchers from the NSHD will talk about their recent findings, as well as their plans for the future.

Note: Holding slides with no sound for the first 4:30min.

Researchers will provide an update on the clinical sub-studies and their future plans.

Researchers from the NSHD will discuss information collected from the COVID questionnaires, and how we are working with other birth cohorts to inform government policy.

Mike Wadsworth (previous director and staff member from 1968) provides an insight into the history of the NSHD. We also provide information about an archive project, which is still ongoing.

Laura Carter, Lecturer in British History at the University of Paris and Laura Fenton, Research Associate at the University of Manchester discuss the different ways the NSHD childhood and early adult questionnaires can be used in historical and sociological research. They will explore what your questionnaires tell us about ordinary peoples’ experiences of growing up, going to school, and becoming an adult in 1950s and 1960s Britain, and why the NSHD is so unique for this purpose.