Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA), United States, 2002-2019 (ICPSR 38836)
Version Date: Sep 25, 2025 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
William S. Kremen, University of California-San Diego;
Carol E. Franz, University of California-San Diego;
Michael J. Lyons, Boston University
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38836.v1
Version V1
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Summary View help for Summary
The Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA) projects began in 2002 with the goal of understanding risk and protective factors, including genetics, for cognitive and brain aging starting in midlife. This NIH funded longitudinal study has completed three waves of data collection (2002-2008; 2008-2014, 2015-2020) following the same group of non-patient, community dwelling male veteran twins from when they were average age 56 to average age 68. A fourth wave of data collection began in October 2021. Although the men are American veterans, this is not a VA sample. This is a nation-wide sample with participants flown into sister data collection sites at either University of California San Diego or Boston University.
The VETSA study encompasses multiple linked grants and data collections with two studies funded continuously since 2002--The VETSA Longitudinal Twin Study of Cognition and Aging and The VETSA Longitudinal MRI Twin Study of Aging. Because of the broad interests of the investigators, while study data focus most heavily on in-person cognitive testing, a wide array of psychosocial, demographic, medical history, physical functioning, and personality measures were also collected. While some measures were only collected at baseline, the majority are repeated at every data collection.
At each wave of data collection, participants completed a lengthy psychosocial questionnaire at home then came to the testing site for a full day (~8 hrs) of in-person testing. Participants were housed for either 2 nights if only part of VETSA aging or 3 nights if they qualified for the MRI data collection.
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Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- The variable CID is the linking variable that can be used to merge datasets.
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Some files provided to ICPSR may reference filenames not included in the ICPSR release.
- Fore more information, please visit the project website.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
To investigate the factors that affect cognitive aging, in particular the early identification of risk for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Sample View help for Sample
Random sampling of Vietnam Era Twin Registry members who participated in the 1990 Harvard Drug Study (Tsuang et al. 2001).
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Male twins who both served in the U.S. military between 1965 and 1975 (the Vietnam Era). Nationwide sample, community dwelling. Large twin sample needed to conduct genetic analyses.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
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Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2025-09-25
Version History View help for Version History
2025-09-25 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:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
This study is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA), the aging program within ICPSR. NACDA is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Heath (NIH).