Identifying and describing commonly used measures across LifeCourse cohorts

The LifeCourse Initiative aims to enable researchers to more effectively leverage the value of existing cohorts to improve child and adolescent health. This includes facilitating the use of cross-cohort methodologies, such as replication or analysis of pooled data, that draw together multiple cohorts for analysis. To promote the collection of harmonised data across cohorts, LifeCourse have identified the most frequently used survey measures across the cohorts to date, and provided information about these measures in relation to common criteria that cohorts need to consider when weighing up their appropriateness for their data collections. This information has now been integrated within the LifeCourse Measurement Library. This document provides a comprehensive look at how LifeCourse undertook this work and future opportunities to promote data harmonisation across cohort studies.