A health survey of Aberdeen primary pupils, which became an important benchmark for asthma care across the UK and Europe, is to be sent home in schoolbags again, half a century on.
Aberdeen University researchers first asked the parents and guardians of 900 children to complete the questionnaire in 1964.
Five decades on, the same survey about respiratory health is to be sent home with pupils attending the same city primary schools as before.
Dr Steve Turner, senior clinical lecturer in child health at the university and honorary consultant paediatrician with NHS Grampian, said it was likely that some of the youngsters taking part would be the third generation of their families to be involved.
The survey of pupils from P5-7 was originally devised to examine educational outcomes and questions on asthma, eczema and hayfever were included because in those days children with bad asthma were sent to special schools.
The Aberdeen School Asthma Study – as it has become known – was repeated in the same schools in 1989 and has happened every five years since.
Dr Turner said: “These surveys have given us incredibly helpful insights to asthma prevalence in Aberdeen over the years.
“And if you plot that prevalence over time against other studies, asthma frequency elsewhere shadows that in Aberdeen with uncanny precision.
“We hope that the survey of 2014 will demonstrate a drop – possibly a big drop – in asthma prevalence.”
The Aberdeen School Asthma Survey has received funding of almost £60,000 from Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland (CHSS).