Jacqui E. Smith, Ph.D. - US grants

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Several population studies within the network of Health and Retirement studies have collected retrospective life histories to address multidisciplinary needs for information about partners, fertility, finances, employment, health, and residential location over the entire life course. These data about events and contexts in childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and early midlife provide new insights into societal, historical, subgroup, and idiosyncratic factors that contribute to late-life outcomes. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and Survey of Health and Ageing in Europe (SHARE) fielded harmonized 50-minute computer-assisted in-person event history interviews from 2007 to 2009. Because of the length, cost, and the constraints of its biennial protocol, this life histoy interview module has not yet been included in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We adopt a four-step approach to begin to address the need for such data in HRS. First, we will undertake an in-depth review of the current status of HRS life history data and determine the extent that these data could be harmonized with the ELSA and SHARE life histories. Much information about employment, marital/partnership, fertility, and health histories and lifetime traumas has already been collected in HRS biennial interviews. These data, however, were collected in different waves and are difficult for users to aggregate and reconcile. We anticipate that our in-depth review process will identify gaps in existing HRS records of work, residential, education, and health histories and inconsistencies in questions and codes compared to the ELSA and SHARE data. Second, following this review and in consultation with sister studies, we will design and test a self-administered paper Life History Mail Survey (LHMS) to fill the gaps and supplement HRS life histories. Third, we plan to field the LHMS in HRS in 2017. HRS is currently funded to collect two mail surveys in 2017: 40% of the panel will be assigned to the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS) and the remaining 60% will receive a mail survey on a different topic. We seek funds to collect and process an additional mail survey (the LHMS) from 40% of the HRS panel (i.e., the CAMS subsample). HRS will collect and process the LHMS from the remaining 60% of the panel. Finally, we will consolidate and disseminate several user-friendly HRS life history public and restricted data products. We will also produce technical reports, documentation, and user guides to disseminate on the HRS website. One public file will consolidate aggregated information from various biennial waves: A second will release the 2017 LHMS data. The potential benefit to HRS-users of this initial enriched stock of information about the lives of HRS participants between childhood and age 50 will be major. The availability of these resources will expand the scope of harmonized data across HRS, ELSA, SHARE, and related studies and foster multidisciplinary cross- national comparisons of life course factors associated with health and well-being in later life. Our work will serve as the foundation for future linkages of HRS life histories with administrative data.

The mysteries of specific mechanisms underlying Alzheimer?s Disease (AD) and Alzheimer's-Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) are still being solved, as is understanding individual differences in susceptibility to differential rates of age-related cognitive decline and brain pathology. Proposals about sources, functions, and mechanisms associated with so-called cognitive reserve are central to one prominent theory about differential susceptibility. Although there is considerable debate about the precise operationalization of cognitive reserve, theory and research suggests that individuals possessing greater amounts of cognitive reserve are better able to cope with higher levels of brain pathology or other neurological insult before reaching clinical thresholds of progressive dementia-related impairment. Implicit in this theory is the possibility that cognitive reserve might be a modifiable risk factor. Given this assumption, much social science and public health research has focused on identifying societal and behavioral factors that contribute to the accumulation of cognitive reserve and account for secular trends in the prevalence of dementia. Educational attainment and occupation are two factors consistently invoked as potential sources of cognitive reserve but important gaps remain in understanding what aspects of educational and occupational experience are important, why, and for whom. We propose to leverage two new opportunities in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine some of these gaps. First, in the initial cycle of the project, we developed a Life History Mail Study (LHMS). The LHMS (fielded in 2015 and 2017) provides important insight into the content, quality, and contexts of early and lifelong education together with characteristics of job histories. This detail considerably enhances the scope and richness of information about these two factors and opens possibilities to link to historical administrative data. To date, most population research on older adults has been restricted to limited information about the number of years of early-life education and highest degree, and the characteristics of the last or longest job. In addition to the content and characteristics of education and jobs, the new LHMS data provide important information about lifetime exposures and trajectories (e.g., lifelong education, career progression, changes in job complexity, and trajectory disruptions). Second, in 2016, as part of a Healthy Cognitive Aging Project (HCAP), HRS introduced a new cognitive battery designed to identify progressive cognitive decline linked to ADRD after age 65. This extends the cognitive performance measures collected longitudinally in each HRS biennial wave. We will take advantage of this opportunity to examine hypotheses about the contributions of educational and occupational histories to differential late-life cognitive decline and dementia. To complete our analyses and continue to enhance the public-use HRS life history information, we will: i) consolidate LHMS data collected in various HRS waves; ii) collect the LHMS from the late baby boomer cohort; iii) enhance efforts to collect the LHMS from non-respondents; and iv) add codes for education and job qualities to the public files.