BRHS Data User Guide

BRHS DATA USER GUIDE

What the BRHS Data User Guide contains

The BRHS Data User Guide provides a detailed introduction to the British Regional Heart Study and comprehensive documentation to support researchers in accessing, understanding, and using the BRHS data.

It begins with guidance on accessing BRHS data via the UK Data Service, followed by background information on the study, including its origins, aims, funding, ethical approvals, consent procedures, and key publications. The guide describes the study population, cohort composition, and the overall study timeline, supported by figures and maps.

The guide then outlines all sources of BRHS data and follow-up, including:

  • Physical examinations (baseline and 20-, 30-, and 40-year follow-ups), with detailed tables summarising response rates, physical and clinical measurements, biomarkers, and derived or standardised variables.
  • Postal questionnaires administered at multiple time points from 1978 to 2023, including response rates, questionnaire content, and derived variables.
  • Morbidity follow-up using General Practice (primary care) records.
  • Mortality, cancer, and routine health record linkages, including additional linked datasets such as air pollution, climate/weather data, and area-level deprivation (IMD).

A substantial section is dedicated to data sources and documentation, describing available datasets, data dictionaries, annotated questionnaires, and clear variable and file naming conventions.

The guide provides a dataset-by-dataset overview of all available data, including:

  • Physical examination datasets at each major study wave.
  • Questionnaire datasets and lists of files by questionnaire year.
  • Morbidity and event-outcome datasets (fatal and non-fatal events) across different follow-up periods.
  • Mortality datasets and linked data resources.

Finally, the guide includes practical advice on using the BRHS data, such as finding variables, understanding derived variables, handling missing data, and merging datasets, alongside appendices containing supporting materials (e.g. consent forms).