The Harmonised Data in Five National Longitudinal Cohort Studies project, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), brings together data from five British cohort studies: the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), the 1958 National Child Development Survey (NCDS), the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), Next Steps (formerly the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England), and the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). NCDS, BCS70, Next Steps, and MCS receive core funding from the ESRC and are hosted by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at UCL. NSHD is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and is hosted by the Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL. The Asthma Harmonisation project aimed to document all self-reported measures related to asthma in these five British cohort studies and produce harmonised indicators of self-reported asthma through retrospective harmonisation. This harmonisation serves two primary purposes: improving the measurement of asthma (as an outcome, predictor, or control variable) within cohort analyses, and facilitating cross-cohort research on asthma using these rich datasets.Separate longitudinal datasets were created for each cohort, focusing on self-reported data and some measures derived from doctors' reports and medical records. Biomarkers and linked health data were not included. Focus was given to measures that were administered to entire cohorts only and on the asthma status of cohort members themselves (not their parents).Harmonised asthma data for the MRC National Survey of Health and Development are available under Special Licence from SN 9420. The following four data files are included:harmonised_asthma_ncds: harmonised indicators of self-reported asthma in the 1958 NCDS and includes sweep-specific indicators and derived cumulative indicators.harmonised_asthma_bcs: harmonised indicators of self-reported asthma in the 1970 BCS and includes sweep-specific indicators and derived cumulative indicators.harmonised_asthma_nextsteps: Harmonised indicators of self-reported asthma in Next Steps and includes sweep-specific indicators only.harmonised_asthma_mcs: Harmonised indicators of self-reported asthma in MCS and includes sweep-specific indicators and derived cumulative indicators.Individual identifiers are included to enable the harmonised data to be merged with the main cohort study data.

Topics: