Types of records we use

Children of the 90s want access to your health and social care records. These records include information such as:

• details of visits to your doctor, diagnoses made and any treatment you were given
• hospital information (if you’ve ever been); why you were there and what happened whilst you were there. This includes visits to accident & emergency, if you were admitted to hospital for care or if you received treatment as an outpatient (e.g. to see a specialist consultant or nurse)
• eye tests, hearing tests and dentist records
• details of community care you may receive. This includes care received for any reason – including care for a particular illness, related to aging or for reasons to do with your mental health
• information from your official birth, marriage, death and cancer register details (e.g. occupation, cause of death)
• specific information about you, such as your ethnic group.

We will also collect your contact details (so we can get in touch if we lose contact with you).

Health records are collected by:

1. The NHS (unless you have private health care)

These records will include your doctors (General Practitioner or ‘GP’) records. Your general practice controls access to your GP records.

Some of your patient health records are kept locally. Children of the 90s will work with local NHS groups, especially in the Bristol, Weston-super-Mare and Bath area, to collect your records.

Your patient health records from hospital and community care are held nationally by an organisation called NHS Digital.

Children of the 90s' access to all the records needs approval from the Health Research Authority’s Research Ethics Committee’s and Confidentiality Advisory Group.

The NHS maintain a record of everyone’s contact details, they call this the NHS Central Register. The NHS Central Register has a computerised record of everyone registered with a GP in England and Wales, who their doctor (GP) is and the address they have given their doctor’s practice. It is also used to let research projects know who has been born, who has got married and who has died and who gets cancer. Children of the 90s will collect information from these types of records. The NHS Central Register is part of NHS Digital.

2. Your doctor 

Your records are collected by your GP’s practice.

3. Any private health company

Companies such as a dentists and opticians that provide your health care will also collect your health records.

4. UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency)

Your COVID-19 test records are collected nationally and made available for research by the UKHSA.

1. School education records

School education records are collected by the Department for Education. School education records are held in the National Pupil Database (NPD), a longitudinal database for all children in maintained schools in England, linking information about them (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, attendance and exclusions) to school and college learning aims and attainment. It also holds education attainment information for pupils in non-maintained and independent schools who take part in the tests/exams. For the purposes of the Data Protection Act, the Department for Education is the data controller for the NPD.

Children of the 90s (at the University of Bristol) want to be given information about you from your education records. These records are:

• when you started and left school
• the school you went to (just as we change your name to a ‘barcode’ ID, we also do this for your school name so researchers can’t identify which school you went to)
• your exam or assessment results
• your attendance records
• if you have Special Educational Needs
• your ethnicity
• if you are entitled to free school meals.

We want to use this information, along with any information about you that we have already collected from other organisations (or from focus clinics you have attended, or questionnaires that you or your parents have filled in) for research purposes only. We will use this information to study how experiences of school and education impacts on the lives of the young people taking part in this study.

2. Further education records

Further education records are collected by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Further education records are kept in the ‘Individualised Learner Record’. This is a collection of records about pupils who undertook further education and the institutions where they studied.

3. Higher education (or university) records

Higher education records are collected by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and are kept by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This is a collection of records about pupils who undertook higher education and the institutions where they studied. If you have applied for a university place then your application records are collected by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS).

‌Children of the 90s want access to your benefits and earnings records. These records include information such as:

• where you work and the type of job you do
• how much you earn
• any benefits you may get to help you out
• how much you pay in national insurance and tax
• your contact details, if we lose touch.

Benefits and Earnings Records are collected by the Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

Children of the 90s want access to information about any criminal convictions and caution records you may have.

These records include information such as details of any crime for which you may have received a caution or an offence of which you have been convicted, and details of any decisions made by a court. We also want to use your contact details which appear in these records to make contact with you if we lose touch. Children of the 90s will access this information held in the Police National Computer system through the Ministry of Justice. 

Any criminal records data held by Avon and Somerset Police relating to Children of the 90s participants is now also securely collected and stored by our study, to help researchers explore how our health is related to criminal behaviour. Find out more: Police Data Linkage (PDF, 1,040kB)