What is Growing Up in Bradford?

Growing Up in Bradford is a follow up to the initial Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study. BiB was established to examine the determinants of health and development during childhood and throughout adult life, and recruited 12,453 mothers who experienced 13,858 births. The Growing Up study is the first full follow up of the cohort and aims to investigate the determinants of primary school aged children’s health and development, with a focus on both parents health and wellbeing and the exposure in childhood that may influence future health. The age of children included in this follow up are between seven and 11 years old.

Recruitment process

The study recruited from the pool of individuals who had taken part in the original BiB study, with as many mothers, partners and children from the original cohort recruited as possible. 6,502 children, 5,291 mothers and 826 partners completed the study.

Available data

Each child completed an age appropriate questionnaire, with one of the child’s parents completing a questionnaire about themselves and their partner and a separate questionnaire about their child. Topics included in the adults questionnaire included residential environment characteristics and satisfaction, socio-economic circumstances, social circumstances, and health and behaviour.  The adult completed child survey asked questions about their child’s health, development and behaviour. The child completed child questionnaire asked questions regarding physical activity and diet.

Two subsets of adults were asked further questions. One was asked additional questions regarding their child’s diet and physical activity, and the adult’s views on parenting.  The other was asked questions about their child’s experience of asthma and allergies.

Participants (adults and children) could also volunteer to provide a range of biological measures and samples. As a result, the Growing Up data also contains samples/results of blood tests, blood pressure reading, renal analyses and DEXA scans.