Skip to content
Closer - The home of longitudinal research

Study Spotlight: The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England 2

Blog | | Jennie Blows

We’re heading back into the classroom with this month’s Study Spotlight shining a light on the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England: Cohort 2.   

About the study

Managed by the Department for Education (DfE), the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England: Cohort 2 (LSYPE2) is a major study of young people who were aged 13/14 when the study first began in 2013. Known as ‘Our Future’ to the participants, the study builds on the work of the original LSYPE cohort, which continues to run under a new name of the ‘Next Steps’ study.  

The main aim of the LSYPE2 is to follow young people through their final years of compulsory education and their subsequent transition to other forms of education, training, employment, or other activities, to provide evidence about the lives and experiences of young people growing up in England. 

LSYPE2 was originally designed to be as comparable as possible to the first LSYPE (Next Steps), in terms of both methodology and the questions participants are asked. Many of the topics covered in the first cohort remain very relevant today, and therefore questions have been kept as similar as possible to retain comparability. 

Participants of LSYPE2 are surveyed annually, with the ninth wave of data collection finalised in Autumn 2021, followed by an additional ‘keep in touch’ survey completed in January 2024. As well as gathering important information on young people’s experiences of transitioning out of Higher Education or equivalent, the ninth wave also collected timely information on the impact of COVID-19 on young people’s lives.  

Recent research using the study has investigated: 

Current analyses are underway examining the relationship between mental health and persistent absence in secondary school. 

Find out more information about the study from Anna Scholes and Michael Dale in our video introducing LSYPE2. 

Discover the data

Although LSYPE2 has a strong focus on education, the study also asks young people about a range of other topics, including physical and mental health, risky behaviours, relationships, future plans, employment, and use of leisure time. This provides rich insights into the lives of young people, and the effect that education has across many areas. 

Data has also been collected from the participant’s parents (waves 1-3), which allows LSYPE2 to link information about parental background and socio-economic status, as well as parental views on their children’s lives, to the data from the young people themselves. Approximately 70% of the young people surveyed, and their parents, also gave consent to link their data to administrative records, including the National Pupil Database, HMRC and Department for Work and Pensions records. 

Data from waves 1-9 of LSYPE2 will be available to researchers through the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service (ONS SRS) later this year.  

Scratching the surface 

Of course, this spotlight just provides a quick overview of LSYPE2, its study background and insight into the data it has collected over the years. If you would like to access the data or have any questions, please do get in touch with the DfE’s Longitudinal Studies Team.  

You can keep up to date with all the latest developments on LSYPE2 and the longitudinal research community via our monthly newsletter, Longitudinal News. 

Further information

This blog is part of our ‘Study Spotlight’ series. This series showcases the CLOSER partner studies, demonstrating how to make the most of these valuable assets through CLOSER’s research resources. Every month, we turn the spotlight on a new theme, producing a series of blogs that delve into the backgrounds of studies that share similar characteristics, such as their study sample, design, or topics of research interest.     

‘Study Spotlight’ helps you gain a deeper understanding of the studies in our partnership and how you can better utilise these on your research journey.     

Keep an eye out next month as we turn our Study Spotlight on to the Southampton Women’s Survey – the only study in Europe in which women were recruited when not pregnant and then those who subsequently became pregnant were followed through pregnancy and the children followed-up.    

Previous Study Spotlight blogs:

On Twitter? Follow #StudySpotlight to keep up to date with the series throughout the year.  

Related links: