Description & Citation--Study No. 25281

• Bibliographic Description
• Scope of Study
• Methodology
• Access and Availability

Bibliographic Description

25281

National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II): Cognitive Project, 2004-2006

Ryff, Carol D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Lachman, Margie E., Brandeis University

United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Aging (5-PO1-AG20166)

Ryff, Carol D., and Margie E. Lachman. National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II): Cognitive Project, 2004-2006. ICPSR25281-v4. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-10-25. doi:10.3886/ICPSR25281.v4

Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) Series

Scope of Study

In 1994/1995, the MacArthur Midlife Research Network carried out a national survey of over 7,000 Americans aged 25 to 74. The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in understanding age-related differences in physical and mental health. A description of the study and findings from it are available at http://www.midus.wisc.edu. With support from the National Institute on Aging, a longitudinal follow-up of the original MIDUS samples (core sample (N = 3,487), metropolitan over-samples (N = 757), twins (N = 957 pairs), and siblings (N = 950)) was conducted in 2004-2006. Guiding hypotheses, at the most general level, were that behavioral and psychosocial factors are consequential for health (physical and mental). The purpose of the Cognitive Project was to determine how cognition is related to overall mental and physical health. Specific goals were: (1) to characterize the nature and range of midlife cognitive performance, relative to those younger and older, across multiple domains in a nationally representative sample (MIDUS); and (2) to examine the relationship between biopsychosocial factors (e.g., SES, health status, health-promoting behaviors, metabolic and cardiovascular biomarkers, depression, personality, control beliefs, stressful life events) and individual differences in cognitive functioning. The development of a cognitive battery for the second wave of testing of the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study provided an opportunity to examine the cognitive performance of young, middle-aged and older adults from a wide range of education levels in a large-scale, national sample. As part of the Cognitive Project of the MIDUS II the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) (Lachman & Tun, 2008; Tun & Lachman, 2006) was administered. More information about the BTACT can be found at www.brandeis.edu/projects/lifespan. The BTACT represents the first comprehensive cognitive battery, including measures of speed and reaction time, to be administered by telephone to a national sample across the adult years and into later life. With a response rate of over 86 percent for the cognitive testing component of the MIDUS II, a cognitive data set of unprecedented range in terms of age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), education, and geographic diversity was produced.

adults, cognition, cognitive functioning, cognitive impairment, cognitive processes, health, health status, life satisfaction, mental health, physical heallth

No geographic information is included other than for the Milwaukee cases.

United States

• 2004--2006

• 2004-02-16--2006-03-21

individual

Adult noninstitutionalized population in the contiguous United States

experimental data, survey data

All data files in the MIDUS study (both longitudinal and cross-sectional) can be linked using a key variable called M2ID.

The DDI codebook (PDF file) and the XML file (contained in a .zip package) released by ICPSR were provided by MIDUS and were not changed in any way by ICPSR. These original files do not reflect any of the processing done by ICPSR.

Methodology

All respondents participating in MIDUS II (the longitudinal follow-up to MIDUS [see ICPSR 2760] or the Milwaukee study [see ICPSR 22840]) were eligible to participate in the cognitive assessments.

computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), cognitive assessment test

Completion rates (the denominator is the number of cases successfully completing the initial phone survey) for the cognitive assessments were: Main RDD -- 85 percent, Sibling -- 92 percent, Twin -- 87 percent, and Milwaukee -- 52 percent.

All archived data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. The archive 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, the archive performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Created online analysis version with question text.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Access and Availability

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

2009-05-04

• 2011-10-25 The document titled DDI codebook has been renamed Codebook.

• 2010-11-01 The data have been updated and now include 306 cases from the Milwaukee subsample. The documentation has also been updated to reflect this change.