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The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) is a population-based study of health and social factors on a national scale, aiming to understand the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans by examining the interactions among physical health, illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, and social connectedness. It is designed to provide health providers, policy makers, and individuals with useful information and insights into these factors, particularly on social and intimate relationships.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC), along with Principal Investigators at the University of Chicago, conducted more than 3,000 interviews during 2005 and 2006 with a nationally representative sample of adults aged 57 to 85. Face-to-face interviews and biomeasure collection took place in respondents' homes. Round 3 was conducted from September 2015 through November 2016, where 2,409 surviving Round 2 respondents were re-interviewed, and a New Cohort consisting of adults born between 1948 and 1965 together with their spouses or co-resident partners was added. All together, 4,777 respondents were interviewed in Round 3. The following files constitute Round 3: Core Data, Social Networks Data, Disposition of Returning Respondent Partner Data, and Proxy Data.

Included in the Core files (Datasets 1 and 2) are demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, race, and ethnicity. Other topics covered respondents' social networks, social and cultural activity, physical and mental health including cognition, well-being, illness, history of sexual and intimate partnerships and patient-physician communication, in addition to bereavement items. In addition data on a panel of biomeasures including, weight, waist circumference, height, and blood pressure was collected. The Social Networks (Datasets 3 and 4) files detail respondents' current relationship status with each person identified on the network roster. The Disposition of Returning Respondent Partner (Datasets 5 and 6) files detail information derived from Section 6A items regarding the partner from Rounds 1 and 2 within the questionnaire. This provides a complete history for respondent partners across both rounds. The Proxy (Datasets 7 and 8) files contain final health data for Round 1 and Round 2 respondents who could not participate in NSHAP due to disability or death.

The COVID-19 sub-study, administered to NSHAP R3 respondents in the Fall of 2020, was a brief self-report questionnaire that probed how the coronavirus pandemic changed older adults' lives. The COVID-19 sub-study questionnaire was limited to assessing specific domains in which respondents may have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including: (1) COVID experiences, (2) health and health care, (3) job and finances, (4) social support, (5) marital status and relationship quality, (6) social activity and engagement, (7) living arrangements, (8) household composition and size, (9) mental health, (10) elder mistreatment, (11) health behaviors, and (12) positive impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Questions about engagement in racial justice issues since the death of George Floyd in police custody were also added to facilitate analysis of the independent and compounding effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and reckoning with longstanding racial injustice in America.

The Oregon Youth Substance Use Project (OYSUP) began in 1998, with the recruitment of 1,075 first through fifth graders within a single school district in a working class community in western Oregon. Youth were followed from early childhood (1st through 5th grade), through adolescence, and into emerging adulthood (at age 20-22), with additional data collection at age 20 to 26. The primary objective of OYSUP was to identify risk and protective factors predictive of or comorbid with the development of substance use and at-risk sexual behaviors. OYSUP consisted of a multi-method annual assessment of etiological factors across numerous contextual (e.g., family, peer, neighborhood and school) and individual (personality, biological) domains, predictive of children's cognitions regarding substance use, their own substance use and their at-risk sexual behaviors (beginning in middle school). This unique study follows a representative sample of youth with approximately annual assessments from early childhood, through adolescence, and into emerging adulthood (at age 20-22). The primary objective of the original project and its renewals is to identify risk and protective factors predictive of or comorbid with the development of substance use and at-risk sexual behaviors.

Quantitative survey data was collected from each respondent from 1998 to 2014. Within the aims of the original OYSUP study and the three subsequent renewals, participants and their parents were followed annually until they were one-year post-high school, with an additional intensive assessment at age 20-22. In each year, the target participant and their parents completed assessments. The intensive assessment at age 20-22 included a diagnostic interview with the target participants and an assessment of cortisol reactivity in response to acute stress. During the school years, teachers completed assessments assessing their student's behavior, and school records for most students were obtained each year. In addition, principals in elementary schools completed school climate assessments and census data is used to obtain measures of neighborhood climate. In the third renewal, questionnaires and interviews were given across a two-year span, when participants were aged 20 to 26. The goal of this supplement was to investigate the factors leading to e-cigarette use and and use of other novel tobacco products across two years. Finally, respondents' demographic information was also collected.