NewsSocial Environment and Biomarkers of Aging Study (SEBAS) in Taiwan, 2000 and 2006One or more files in this study are restricted; consult the detailed metadata page to learn more. Additional information can also be found in the Use Agreement. Social Environment and Biomarkers of Aging Study (SEBAS, ICPSR #3792) in Taiwan Taiwan has undergone rapid demographic, social, and economic changes, becoming a highly urbanized and industrial society with a growing population of persons age 65 or older. SEBAS explores the relationship between life challenges and mental and physical health, the impact of social environment on the health and well-being of the elderly and biological markers of health and stress. The study collected self-reports of physical, psychological, and social well-being, plus extensive clinical data based on medical examinations and laboratory analyses. Examination of health outcomes included chronic illnesses, functional status, psychological well-being, and cognitive function. Questions regarding life challenges focused on perceived stress, economic difficulties, security and safety, and the consequences of a major earthquake. Biological markers were used to identify cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic process measures, immune-system activity, the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis, and sympathetic nervous system activity. Two rounds of biomarker data collected in 2000 and 2006 are complemented by face-to-face interviews with the participants. The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of change in biological measures and health. Specifically, the principal investigators aimed to examine three questions: 1. What individual and environmental factors contribute to our understanding of downstream health and survival? The principal investigators focused on links between health and stressful experience, SES, psychosocial vulnerability and emotional well-being. 2. What factors predict change in bioindicators? The principal investigators examined demographic and psychosocial factors along with environmental exposures to determine how prior experience is associated with change in biomarkers. They focused on the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), emotional well-being, and chronic and acute stressors. They examined change across the full array of biomarkers. 3. Do changes in bioindicators predict health outcomes and survival? The principal investigators used a life course framework to explore how change in bioindicators and trajectories of prior experience and exposures are associated with subsequent health, physical and cognitive function, and survival. Of particular interest are several high-profile bioindicators (telomere length, 5-HTTLPR genotype, and inflammatory markers), new data on factors that may modify these associations (trauma, caregiving, sleep quality, chronic pain, and optimism), and gene-environment interactions. Noreen Goldman, Princeton University Maxine Weinstein, Georgetown University Ming-Cheng Chang, Taiwan Department of Health. Bureau of Health Promotion Hui-Sheng Lin, Taiwan Department of Health. Bureau of Health Promotion Yi-Li Chuang, Taiwan Department of Health. Bureau of Health Promotion Shio-Jean Lin, Taiwan Department of Health. Bureau of Health Promotion Shiow-Ing Wu, Taiwan Department of Health. Bureau of Health Promotion 2012-01-11 Announcing the winner of the NACDA Lady poster drawingCongratulations to Mercedes E. Bern-Klug Ph.D, for winning the NACDA Lady poster at the 2011 GSA. 2012-01-11 Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) data releaseData from the 1st wave of the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) is available for public use. JSTAR is designed to be highly comparable to the HRS, SHARE and ELSA studies. Shared data on Japan is quite rare, so this is an exciting development. Information about the study and application procedures for accessing the data can be found at this website: http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/projects/jstar/index.html 2010-12-08 Project TALENT DataProject Talent is a nationally representative longitudinal study of men and women who were in high school in 1960 and who are currently in their 60s. Project TALENT began as a major national effort to assess the aspirations and abilities of America's young men and women. Initiated in 1957, with support from the U.S. Office of Education and several other government agencies, Project TALENT collected extensive information on characteristics and cognitive abilities of approximately 377,000 individuals in 1960 when they were in high school and in subsequent follow-up studies through age 30. Project TALENT's large sample size, extensive background questionnaire, and cognitive measures make it a premier study for social science research, combining aspects of multiple disciplines in a largely seamless research framework. Project TALENT is uniquely suited to help inform lifecourse outcomes with a nationally representative sample and the power to unpack disparities in health and other characteristics and abilities. NACDA is currently working with the study PIs at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in Washington, DC to develop secondary data resources from the first 30 years of data and to build an archival distribution system for the proposed 50 year follow-up. AIR is providing limited access through NACDA to the baseline and supplemental data for the study as they prepare for a 50 year follow-up. Copies of the Project TALENT data can be obtained from the NACDA Program on Aging by contacting the NACDA Director, James W. McNally at jmcnally@umich.edu. Dr. McNally will send interested users a restricted use agreement for their review and signature. Once the signed original is returned to NACDA at: The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1248 a copy of the data will be sent to users. In the email the user should briefly outline (no more than 1,000 words) their research interest in the data and how their use of the data will contribute to our understanding of the impacts of early life events on later life outcomes. All research ideas are welcome and the research plan will only be for internal review and record keeping by NACDA and AIR. Students interested in the data will need to obtain the signature of a faculty mentor in order to obtain the data. Dr. McNally welcomes any questions or concerns and can be reached either by email or at 734-615-9520. 2010-12-08 ICPSR releases Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) version 3.5ICPSR is pleased to announce the release of Survey Documentation and Analysis version 3.5. The update of SDA, the online data analysis tool developed at the University of California, Berkeley, includes the following improvements:
For more details, including a list of key contributors, see the latest issue of the ICPSR Bulletin. The Bulletin also includes a description of ICPSR's new guidance on data management plans and a summary of participation in our Virtual Data Fair earlier in November. 2010-11-17 NIA/BSR GranteesTo NIA/BSR Grantees: This post is to bring to your attention a few items regarding publication/publications: 1. Please credit NIA in all articles issuing from research funded by NIA. Compliance with the Public Access Policy is a condition of award (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-119.html). 2. When you have a particularly newsworthy article to be published, please contact the NIA Office of Communication and Public Liaison (OCPL) a month prior to publication. OCPL may determine it is appropriate to issue a press release (Vicki.Cahan@nih.gov.). Please also contact your Program Official. 3. We have limited quantities of these three special issue journals; please contact us to request copies: a. Demography, Volume 47, Supplement 2010, pp. S1-S231. Consists of 10 articles based on presentations at the 2009 25th Anniversary Conference of the founding of the Demography and Economics of Aging Centers funded by NIA. Articles were peer reviewed and revised for publication. Attached is the contents page of this issue. b. Perspectives on Psychological Science, Volume 5, Number 5, September 2010, pp. 497-624. Special issue: Genetics, Personalized Medicine, and Behavioral Intervention—Can This Combination Improve patient Care? Most authors of the articles were participants at an NIA workshop in June 2009; each had the charge to define an area linking behavioral interventions with genetics. Free access until November 15, 2010, at http://pps.sagepub.com/content/current. c. Global Health Action, Supplement 2, 2010, Growing Older in Africa and Asia. This publication consists of a set of papers representing a significant step towards better evidence on the health of older populations. These papers are based on studies in four African and four Asian countries as part of a collaboration between two multi-country networks, INDEPTH and SAGE (http://www.globalhealthaction.net/). 4. Sometimes we can provide subventions for special issue journals if they are considered serials. Please call your Program Official to discuss ideas for special journals. On behalf of:
2010-10-27 ICPSR annual report releasedICPSR's 2009-2010 annual report (pdf) is now available. The report describes a productive year, with increases in membership and revenue, and progress on a wide range of new initiatives. The report highlights three new projects at ICPSR: the National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program, the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Liaoning, and the Restricted-Use Contracting System. Three ICPSR researchers are also profiled: JoAnne McFarland, director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive; Christopher Ward, project manager at the Integrated Fertility Survey Series; and John Garcia, ICPSR's director of diversity and leader of the Resource Center for Minority Data. Grant revenue, overall revenue, and our fund balance all increased in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. At the end of the year, ICPSR had nearly 690 members, and more than $19.1 million in revenue. 2010-10-26 ICPSR offers guidelines on data management plansAs one of the leaders in data archiving for nearly 50 years, ICPSR is in a unique position to assist researchers with the data management plans increasingly being required by federal funding agencies such as NIH and NSF. Therefore, we are pleased to offer a new set of guidelines for preparing data management plans. We hope these resources can assist researchers in all disciplines meet these new requirements, and better understand how to preserve and disseminate their research data. Our guidelines provide a detailed list of the elements of a data management plan, developed through a gap analysis of existing recommendations for such plans. We also list existing examples of data management plans, as well as other resources available on the Web. Depositing data with ICPSR can be an integral part of a data management plan. In fact, the NSF's Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences recently named ICPSR as an archive that would help grant applicants meet its requirement for data storage. Our data management plan guidelines also provide information on how to deposit data with ICPSR. We plan to update our guidelines regularly, and welcome any suggestions via email at web-support@icpsr.umich.edu. ICPSR is also hosting a Webinar on data management plans as part of our Social Science Data Fair scheduled for November 8-11. Enrollment is currently open for all sessions. 2010-10-25 National Longitudinal Mortality StudyThe National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS) consists of a database developed for the purpose of studying the effects of demographic and socio-economic characteristics on differentials in U.S. mortality rates. The NLMS is a unique research database in that it is based on a multistage stratified sample of the non-institutionalized population of the United States. It consists of U.S. Census Bureau data from Current Population Surveys, Annual Social and Economic Supplements and a subset of the 1980 Census, combined with death certificate information to identify mortality status and cause of death. The study currently consists of approximately 3.0 million records with over 250,000 identified mortality cases. The content of the socio-economic variables available offers researchers the potential to answer questions on mortality differentials for a variety of important socio-economic and demographic subgroups not covered as extensively in other databases. Study Design The NLMS currently consists of Annual Social and Economic Supplements which cover the period from March 1973 to March 2002, Current Population Surveys for February 1978, April 1980, August 1980, December 1980, and September 1985, and one 1980 Census cohort, 30 cohorts in all. Mortality information is obtained from death certificates available for deceased persons through the National Center for Health Statistics. Important variables available for analyses are standard demographic and socio-economic variables such as education, income and employment as well as information collected from death certificates, including cause of death. Data Access There are currently three options for obtaining access to NLMS data. These options are described below. A fourth option for accessing NLMS data through the Census Bureau's Research Data Centers is currently in the works. Option 1: An NLMS public-use file is available to interested researchers upon request through NLMS-Census Bureau principal investigator, Norm Johnson. Due to the confidential nature of the NLMS Title 13 data, the NLMS Public-use file consists of a limited set of NLMS variables. The reference manual containing a list and description of variables available on the NLMS dataset is available at this link: http://www.census.gov/did/www/nlms/publications/reference.html. Note that the Reference Manual at this site is for the full NLMS dataset, not for the NLMS Public-use file. The public-use file contains many of the key demographic and socio-economic variables that are available in the full NLMS, such as: education, income, percent poverty, state of residence, occupation, and industry. For further detail on the content of the NLMS Public-use file, contact Norm Johnson, Census Bureau NLMS Principal Investigator (contact information below). Option 2: Research access to the entire NLMS database may be arranged through the principal investigators of the NLMS sponsoring agencies (list provided at end). Research proposals should be submitted through the principal investigator of one of the sponsoring agencies. The research proposal should fall within the general health interests of the agency. Principal investigators sponsor research through a quick-turn-around approval process established by the NLMS Steering Committee. The principal investigator of the sponsoring agency determines the priority of the NLMS research sponsored by their agency. Approved projects are assigned to an NLMS statistician who works directly with the researcher as a statistical consultant and as the interface to the NLMS database. Results are delivered to researchers on a, short-turnaround, flow basis through the most convenient means available in either electronic or hard copy format. Option 3: A researcher may also work directly with an NLMS statistician on-site at the Census Bureau by becoming a Special Sworn Census Bureau employee. Persons interested in considering this option should contact Norm Johnson (contact information below). Data Linkages NLMS data can be, and has been, linked to other data sets, including Medicare hospitalization data, and Census 1990 and Census 2000 Tract data. Researchers may obtain access to the linked data through Options 2 or 3 above. Data Limitations The NLMS is based on specific survey months of the Current Population Survey, the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, and a subset of the 1980 Census. These are one-time data collection processes with no subsequent data collection. Therefore, one limitation of NLMS data is that they provide a one-time only baseline measurement of subjects in a long-term follow-up situation. Another limitation of these data is that, although the CPS and census instruments do provide extensive data collection capabilities in specific subject matter areas, desirable general or specific health information is not collected, and smoking status is available on only a limited number of records. NLMS Principal Researchers Contact Information: U.S. Census Bureau: National Institute on Aging: National Cancer Institute: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: National Center for Health Statistics: 2010-10-13 Crosswalk available for the NLTCSNational Long-Term Care Survey: 1982, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, and 2004 (ICPSR #9681) A crosswalk, for all years is available (Excel file doc06981-all_crosswalk.xlsx). In addition, all documentation files are now publicly available for this study. Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09681 2010-09-02 |
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