Next Steps Longitudinal Dataset [work in progress]

Centre for Longitudinal Studies

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Overview

• This repository provides R scripts that harmonise the multiple sweeps of Next Steps into a single tidy dataset, so analysts can get straight to research rather than recoding.
• The variables are given consistent names which relate to the content and age of participants (e.g., educ25 for education attainment at age 25).

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Included variable domains

Domain	Examples
Demographics	sex, ethnicity, language, sexuality, partnership, region,
Education	qualifications, parents' qualifications.
Socioeconomic	own economic activity, parental economic activity, own NSSEC, parental NSSEC, home ownership, household income, IMD
Physical and mental health	psychological distress, life satisfaction, self-harm,anxiety, depression, loneliness, long-term illness, self‑rated health
Anthropometrics	weight, height, BMI
Behaviours	smoking, alcohol, drug, exercise, school absence, policy contact, bullying victimisation

See ns_mseu_userguide.docx for full details.

Syntax and data availability

The derivevariable.R file contains the annotated syntax to create this dataset.

The source datasets are available to download from the UK Data Service. This derived variable dataset will be despotied once completed.

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User feedback and future plans

We welcome user feedback and plan to expand this dataset in future releases. Please email [email protected].

Licence

Code: MIT Licence (see LICENSE). Derived datasets remain subject to the Next Steps End‑User Licence terms.

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© 2025 UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies