Search results

In 1958, the Medical Follow-up Agency (MFUA) of the Institute of Medicine began a project to identify twins who had jointly entered military service during World War II. In the end, MFUA identified nearly 16,000 White male twin pairs born 1917-1927 in which both members had served in the military. These twins comprise the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council World War II Twin Registry (NAS-NRC Twin Registry). This collection represents data from service records, a mailed questionnaire assessing zygosity, and repeating health surveys, including information on education, employment history, and earnings.

There are nine datasets associated with this restricted-use collection:

1) The Administrative dataset includes demographic, zygosity, service history, mortality, and questionnaire participation data;

2) The Service and Other Records dataset contains information collected from service records, physical exam data, cognitive test data, and dental records;

3) The Questionnaire 2 dataset consists of data collected in the first mailed questionnaire sent in 1965 about pain, illnesses, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, and employment;

4) The Questionnaire 3 dataset includes data from the baseline epidemiological questionnaire sent in 1974 about number and sex of children, religious attendance, education, income, and occupation;

5) Questionnaire 7, mailed in 1985, contains similar topics as in Questionnaire 2, and includes data about health conditions such as diabetes, as well as feelings about work and retirement;

6) Questionnaire 8 was mailed in 1998 was the third epidemiologic questionnaire. This dataset is comprised of overlapping topics with Q2 and Q7, and has additional data about feelings, prescription medications, activity levels, the Geriatric Depression Scale, and parental death status;

7) The NEO Personality Inventory dataset includes responses to the NEO Five-Factor Personality Inventory mailed in 2005-2006;

8) The Service and Death Records dataset (VDE access only) contains information about date and place of birth, state at induction, disciplinary measures during service, decorations received during service, indicator for those known to have been POWs, reason for separation from the military, age at death if died over age 90, and cause of death. Some of this information was obtained from the re-read of service records and is thus available only for a subset of 6357 men;

9) Diagnoses dataset (VDE access only) contains data about medical conditions diagnosed between 1935 and 1985 that were abstracted from a variety of medical records over the course of the study. The diagnoses were coded using the International Classification of Disease system (WHO, 2015).