Search results

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) is a longitudinal study that follows up all babies born in a single week throughout their lifetime. It is an important source of evidence for the Moser Committee's enquiry into adult basic skills (literacy and numeracy) (report indexed at TD/IRD 88.175) but it needed expanding and updating because of the relatively small sub-samples from which the original basic skills data were collected. The government strategy that flowed from the enquiry, Skills for Life (indexed at TD/IRD 88.171), and the research program the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) created to support it, offered the opportunity to extend the measurement of literacy and numeracy skills to the whole of one of the birth cohorts, i.e. the 1970 cohort at the age of 34. This report details the design of the NRDC-funded components of the 34-year-old BCS70 follow-up survey. It includes the different piloting stages, the analysis of the data collected and the conclusions leading to final design decisions.