National Senior Citizens Survey, 1968 (ICPSR 7626)

Principal Investigator(s): Schooler, Kermit

Summary: This data collection contains the responses to a 1968 National Senior Citizens Survey of 3,996 noninstitutionalized persons 65 years of age and older in a national sample of the continental United States. The primary emphasis of the survey was to determine the impact of environmental attributes on some aspects of aging, primarily life satisfaction, social relationships, and knowledge and use of services. Also of interest were the interrelationships among environment, social ... (more info)

• This data is freely available.

Schooler, Kermit. National Senior Citizens Survey, 1968. ICPSR07626-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1979. doi:10.3886/ICPSR07626.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07626.v1

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This survey was funded by:

• United States Public Health Service

Summary:   This data collection contains the responses to a 1968 National Senior Citizens Survey of 3,996 noninstitutionalized persons 65 years of age and older in a national sample of the continental United States. The primary emphasis of the survey was to determine the impact of environmental attributes on some aspects of aging, primarily life satisfaction, social relationships, and knowledge and use of services. Also of interest were the interrelationships among environment, social relationships, and morale. Administered with personal interviews, the survey focused on characteristics of the respondent's residential environment (e.g., physical characteristics of home and neighborhood, value of property, and work/retirement status), social relationships (e.g., organization memberships, family relationships, and number of activities involved in), morale (e.g., self-concept, stated happiest time of life, attitudes about the state of the world), and health (e.g., number of doctor visits in past year, number of times health status interfered with activities, and self rating of physical health). General demographic characteristics are also included.

Subject Terms:   adult care services, aging, health status, home environment, independent living, knowledge (awareness), life satisfaction, living arrangements, living conditions, long term care, morale, older adults, quality of life, social attitudes, social services, supportive services

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1968

Date of Collection:  

• 1968

Universe:   Noninstitutionalized adults 65 years and over living in the continental United States.

Data Types:   survey data

Data Collection Notes:

Multiplying the weight variable (Variable 817) by the number of persons 65 years of age and over in the household (Variable 818) produces the Respondent Weight. The frequencies are unweighted.

Sample:   National area probability sampling.

Data Source:

personal interviews

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Standardized missing values.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  1984-03-18

Version History:

• 2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

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