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The Medical Research Council (MRC) National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) is an ongoing cohort study involving some 5,362 men and women born in England, Scotland and Wales, who have been followed up since their birth in March 1946. Over the 70+ year follow-up, study participants have provided personal information about their health and life circumstances, and taken part in a wide range of tests of their physical, cognitive and mental health, including the Insight 46 neuroscience sub-study, which links brain scan images to neurological and sensory tests, amongst others. Their right to privacy, and the ethical conduct of all researchers accessing the data, must be guaranteed.

The scientific mission of the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL (LHA), which manages the NSHD, is the discovery of life course influences on normal and healthy ageing, and the promotion of healthy ageing.


This website provides information for researchers to discover NSHD data, browse metadata, and submit data access requests to the NSHD Data Sharing Committee. It should be used as part of a set of tools that will help you find NSHD data for your research and obtain access to these data.

For full access to this site, and to use the companion system Skylark (for variable metadata browsing and bespoke dataset building), you will need to register on Skylark and obtain a login.
This is to enable us to keep your metadata and variable level searches separate from every other researcher using these tools; and so you can create, save and edit your own personal dataset shopping baskets.

Registration on Skylark is not automatic, so there will be a slight delay in activating your login. In the meantime, feel free to browse the site to gain an understanding of the NSHD data sharing process and the types of data available.

The left menu bar gives quick access to the main sections of the website. The search box on the top right of every page gives another way to find pages of interest. Just start typing the topic keyword you are looking for (e.g. 'DNA'), and a list of any matching pagenames will pop up. This search is best used for broad data collection topics or general aspects of the NSHD.


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