The UK is home to the world’s largest and longest-running longitudinal studies.
Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (CLOSER) aims to maximise their use, value and impact both at home and abroad.
Bringing together eight leading cohort studies, the British Library and the UK Data Archive, CLOSER works to stimulate interdisciplinary research, develop shared resources, provide training, and share expertise.
A central component of CLOSER is the development of a metadata discovery platform, CLOSER Discovery, that is providing a portal to hundreds of thousands of variables, questions, and data collection instruments from across the CLOSER portfolio of studies.
The portal:
A beta version was launched late 2015, and the live version early in 2017. Work is ongoing to add more questions, measures and variables from the main cohort and longitudinal studies.
The second strand of work concerns ensuring that the harmonised work packages created as part of CLOSER are systematically described and archived at the UK Data Service.
Our contribution
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Hardy, University College London
Co-Investigator: Louise Corti, UK Data Service
Manager USP: Veerle van den Eynden, Jeannine Beeken, UK Data Service
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Project dates: October 2012 - March 2021
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