Title [e.g., Next Steps Longitudinal Derived Variable dataset - note also repository names should ideally be short and descriptive, e.g., mcs_x (where x is the type of variables covered in a single word)]

Centre for Longitudinal Studies

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Overview [high-level summary, e.g. the below]

• This repository provides R scripts that harmonise the multiple sweeps of Next Steps into a single tidy dataset, so analysts can get straight to research rather than recoding.
• The variables are given consistent names that reflect the content and age of participants (e.g., Educ25 for educational attainment at age 25).

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Included variable domains [give an illustrative overview – no need to duplicate what already exists e.g., in UKDS documentation]

Domain	Examples
Demographics	sex, ethnicity, language
Socio-economic	parental education, household income
Education	qualifications, institution type
Health	self-rated health, limiting illness
Relationships	partnership status, sexual orientation

See xxx.docx for full details.

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Syntax and data availability [tell the user where the syntax is + how source data should be set up to run it]

• Source data: Download raw Next Steps files from the UK Data Service and place them in data/raw/.
• Syntax: 01_build_dataset.R reads those files and produces data/derived/next_steps.parquet (note: keep the code well-commented and use relative file paths—e.g., here::here("data", "raw", ...) in R, or $raw / $derived globals in Stata).
• Derived dataset: Available to download from the UK Data Service.

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User feedback and future plans

We welcome user feedback. Please open an issue on GitHub or email clsdata@ucl.ac.uk.

Authors

• X author

Contributors [optional e.g., for code checkers]

• X contributor

Licence

Code: MIT Licence (see LICENSE).

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© 2025 UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies