The main goal of TEDS is to use behavioural genetic methods to find out how nature (genes) and nurture (environments) can explain why people differ with respect to their cognitive abilities, learning abilities and behaviours.
The study was founded by Robert Plomin in 1994, and it includes participants from over 15,000 families.
[1] The original participants were identified from birth records among the set of twins born in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 1996.
[2] In 2021, Thalia Eley took over the study with Plomin stepping down as director.
The goals of the next phase of the TEDS study will focus on the Children of the TEDS Group (CoTEDS) and will explore Eley's own research area on mental health.