The Youth Cohort Study was a major programme of longitudinal research designed to monitor the behaviour and decisions of representative samples of young people aged sixteen upwards as they make the transition from compulsory education to further or higher education, or to the labour market. It was designed to identify and explain the factors which influence post 16 transitions, for example, educational attainment, training opportunities and experiences at school. The Youth Cohort Study covers thirteen cohorts and over forty surveys. The first cohort was first surveyed in 1985 and the thirteenth in 2007. The Youth Cohort Study series ended in 2010; this was largely due to plans for Second Longitudinal Study of Young People in England2 and the overlaps in topics covered by Youth Cohort Study and Second Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. The data particularly for the most recent cohort are still widely used by the team and the external research community.
