My placement with CoTEDS (Children of TEDS) at King’s College London aimed to give me hands-on experience supporting the running of an intergenerational, longitudinal study, and this was fully met.

Working with the wonderful TEDS and CoTEDS staff, I learned how to use the longitudinal database, what ongoing data collection and input involve, and how to engage research participants meaningfully, including through initiatives like t-shirts and informative newsletters for parents. I also had the opportunity to work with the longitudinal data in a research capacity, learning how to analyse twin data and gaining experience with latent variable analysis, which has been directly useful for my own PhD research.

One particular highlight was seeing TEDS twins, who have themselves been part of the study for over 30 years, send us photos of their own babies and ask for them to be registered in CoTEDS, a lovely reminder of just how much history and trust an intergenerational study builds over time.

I thoroughly enjoyed the placement and could see myself working within a longitudinal research team in the future.