[1] It was conducted by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke on over 55,000 pregnant mothers at 12 sites across the United States from 1959 to 1965.
It was originally dubbed the "Collaborative Study of Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Other Neurological and Sensory Disorders of Infants and Children".
[4] It was controversial from its inception, with critics arguing that the data being collected was of poor quality, and that the funding for the study would be better spent a larger number of smaller, more focused projects.
It was conducted at 12 academic centers, which had the advantage of facilitating expert involvement in the research and to complete follow-up, but had the drawback of decreasing representativeness.
[6][7] The study also followed up on 37,431 babies born from 1959 to 1966; the results of this follow-up were described in the 1979 book The First Year of Life.