IntroductionPregnancy and the first few years of a child’s life are important windows of opportunity in which to equalise life chances. A Better Start (ABS) is an area-based intervention being delivered in five areas of socioeconomic disadvantage across England. This protocol describes an evaluation of the impact and cost-effectiveness of ABS.Methods and analysisThe evaluation of ABS comprises a mixed-methods design including impact, cost-effectiveness and process components. It involves a cohort study in the 5 ABS areas and 15 matched comparison sites (n=2885), beginning in pregnancy in 2017 and ending in 2024 when the child is age 7, with a separate cross-sectional baseline survey in 2016/2017. Process data will include a profiling of the structure and services being provided in the five ABS sites at baseline and yearly thereafter, and data regarding the participating families and the services that they receive. Eligible participants will include pregnant women living within the designated sites, with recruitment beginning at 16 weeks of pregnancy. Data collection will involve interviewer-administered and self-completion surveys at eight time points. Primary outcomes include nutrition, socioemotional development, speech, language and learning. Data analysis will include the use of propensity score techniques to construct matched programme and comparison groups, and a range of statistical techniques to calculate the difference in differences between the intervention and comparison groups. The economic evaluation will involve a within-cohort study economic evaluation to compare individual-level costs and outcomes, and a decision analytic cost-effectiveness model to estimate the expected incremental cost per unit change in primary outcomes for ABS in comparison to usual care.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval to conduct the study has been obtained. The learning and dissemination workstream involves working within and across the sites to generate learning via communities of practice and a range of learning and dissemination events.

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Efficient development of questionnaires for longitudinal surveys and cohort studies as computerassisted survey instruments usually entails close collaboration between scientific and fieldwork teams. We describe a system based on the use of a Structured Query Language (SQL) database established to maximise efficiency, minimise error and ensure clear communication of requirements across teams for 'Life Study', a UK-wide cohort study designed to recruit mothers, their babies, partners and non-resident fathers, with whom further contacts were planned at the outset. The use of the SQL database enabled construction and integration of different elements of the study, initially through creating a master copy of each variable. This supported swift and accurate creation of a range of outputs enabling, for example, review and approval of successive drafts and final specifications of questionnaires, efficient implementation of changes to variables, re-use of metadata specified at the outset, reduction of ambiguities for survey programmers, and efficient and accurate automation of questionnaire scripting. The SQL database was also used to generate the syntax to transform pilot data into formats specified for data archiving and for associated publication quality questionnaires. This innovative use of an SQL database for questionnaire development and scripting, and subsequent data processing and documentation, highlights the value of this approach in improving the quality and efficiency of longitudinal surveys.