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In 1995-1996, the MacArthur Midlife Research Network carried out a national survey of 7,108 Americans aged 25 to 74 (MIDLIFE IN THE UNITED STATES (MIDUS), 1995-1996 [ICPSR 2760]). 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. The study was innovative for its broad scientific scope, its diverse samples (which included twins and the siblings of main sample respondents), and its creative use of in-depth assessments in key areas (e.g., daily stress and cognitive functioning). 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 = 925 complete pairs), and siblings (N = 950), was conducted in 2004-2006. Guiding hypotheses for it, at the most general level, were that behavioral and psychosocial factors are consequential for physical and mental health. MIDUS 2 respondents were aged 35 to 86. Data collection largely repeated baseline assessments (e.g., phone interview and extensive self-administered questionnaire), with additional questions in selected areas (e.g., cognitive functioning, optimism and coping, stressful life events, and caregiving). To add refinements to MIDUS 2, an African American sample (N = 592) was recruited from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who participated in a personal interview and completed a questionnaire paralleling the above assessments. Survey data for the Milwaukee sample are available in a separate project [ICPSR 22840]. Also administered was a modified form of the mail questionnaire, via telephone, to respondents who did not complete a self-administered questionnaire.

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).

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.