New Directions in the Sociology of Aging (2013) / Chapter Skim
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3 Data Needs and Opportunities
3 Data Needs and Opportunities
Pages 31-55
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From page 31... ...
The new context of intergenerational transmission needs entirely new measures such as space-time linked measures of neighborhood environments. This chapter also points to the wedding of biological and sociological measures that is already underway and suggests that the growing study of biomarkers also generates a growing need for new measures, particularly to investigate the mediation of the social environment over the life course.
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From page 32... ...
The HRS itself is of immense research value, permitting the study of relationships between health and cognitive outcomes, genetic profiles, economic status and behaviors, and social relationships over time and across cohorts and ages. It further features potential linkages to other data sources, including Medicare claims, the National Death Index, and administrative earnings and benefits data from Social Security.
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From page 33... ...
Among these valuable datasets are • the National Health Interview Survey; • the Current Population Survey; • the American Community Survey; • the National Longitudinal Mortality Study; • the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) , a long-running panel with unique multigenerational coverage, a recently expanded health content and a Disability and Time Use "daily diary" module, fo cused on older adults; 1 hese include the Mexican Health and Aging Study; the English Longitudinal Study of Age T ing; the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing; the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement; the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study; the Longitudinal Aging Study in India; and the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (now comprising 16 nations)
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From page 34... ...
We collect data to address important research questions, but existing data then constrain our ability to address the new questions we discover. The changing demographics of the aging population require changing data collections.
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From page 35... ...
Measurement of Interhousehold and Intergenerational Transmission of Resources Without doubt, the demography of family life in the United States has changed, in ways that include increased life expectancy, lower fertility, lengthening of generations, divorce, nonmarital childbearing, multipartner fertility, social parents when one biological parent cohabits, and grandparents who themselves separate and repartner. "These demographic changes," asserts Seltzer (2011b, p.
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From page 36... ...
This intergenerational transmission of context clearly calls for new measures and data, such as space-time linked measures of neighborhood environments, to understand the maintenance and reproduction of inequality, the need for care among aging parents, and the capacity to provide care by adult children. Contexts other than neighborhoods are also relevant to "the friction of human lives in action." In Networks, Neighborhoods, and Institutions: An Integrated "Activity Space" Approach for Research on Aging (see Chapter 8)
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From page 37... ...
22) note that "scientists have extensively documented the relationship of socioeconomic status to health but are barely beginning to understand the processes generating the relationship." Indeed, some lament that the exponential increase in biomarker collection has outpaced theorizing about biosocial interactions (see Weinstein, Glei, and Goldman, Chapter 11; Shnittker, Chapter 13)
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From page 38... ...
Shanahan (see Chapter 12) sees social genomics as a most "promising subfield" of research on aging because: By establishing these meditational links between social experiences and transcriptional activity, scientists can begin to understand how social ex periences, like those associated with socioeconomic status, affect physical and mental health.
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From page 39... ...
Discerning a relationship among environment, physiology, and behavior, as well as the implications of that interaction for healthy aging, requires careful measurement in all these domains -- although, as Shanahan (Chapter 12) underscores, "it may be that stressorinflammatory symptom associations are characterized by multifinality (the same causal agents leading to different outcomes)
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From page 40... ...
have concluded that social support is reliably related to beneficial effects on cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems. Most studies, however, looked only at the positive aspects of social relationships, neglecting the negative impact of much social interaction or the burden of some social ties.
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From page 41... ...
• uilding on recent advances in the use of biomeasures and linking B them to social and behavioral processes through conceptualization of the potential links, attention to measurement tools and analysis techniques, identification of "best practices" in developing the linkages, and the development of protocols for cross-training of researchers in sociology with other relevant disciplines, such as genetics, economics, medicine, and biology. • I lluminating the mechanisms that mediate between social contexts and health, both across the life course and over generations.
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From page 42... ...
The important question of intergenerational transfers could be explicated by additional information collected in the process of conducting existing surveys. This might include, for example, intergenerational relationships, such as the children and grandchildren of respondents in the WLS, or the stepchildren of respondents in the PSID, or the parents of respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Adult Health as part of the HRS.
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From page 43... ...
Fuller attention could be given, in smaller studies, to mapping social networks and exploring both negative and positive aspects of social interactions. They could also investigate intergenerational transfers more extensively.
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From page 44... ...
Possible useful linkages include linking survey data to the administrative records of Medicare (such as pioneered with HRS data) ,4 to Social Security administrative data, to private employer pension plans, and to the National Death Index.
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From page 45... ...
There is a growing variety of applications of big data techniques. Government agencies from the Intelligence Advanced Research Activity to the Census Bureau have taken an interest in using Web search queries, Internet commerce postings, Internet traffic flow, financial market indicators, traffic Webcams, changes in Wikipedia entries, and the like to detect patterns in communication, consumption, and population movement.
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From page 46... ...
Other advantages of EMAs are improvement in compliance via electronic data capture, elimination of recall problems among the cognitively impaired, ease of implementation, and validation of global measures. (For more on EMAs, see Cain et al., 2009; Shiffman et al., 2008)
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From page 47... ...
• E xplore the use of the Internet and other electronic media to gather information on patterns of human interaction, consumption, and behavior. HARMONIZATION OF DATA COLLECTION EFFORTS With the number and range of studies being conducted on aging, the need for international comparisons, and the involvement of researchers from many different disciplines, harmonization of efforts is crucial.
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From page 48... ...
The term may be deemed to apply to biological parents, stepparents, social parents acquired through a biological parent's cohabitation with another adult, and perhaps other parent figures. Household resident is another term open to different interpretations -- by both data collectors and respondents.
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From page 49... ...
International investigations of the SES-health nexus require comparable measures as they observe patterns and attempt to trace causal connections. Some progress has been made in recent years in harmonizing international data on aging through extending HRS-type data collections in several countries, but there are additional opportunities in this area.
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From page 50... ...
Social genomics and other areas of investigation require such data, but it is not sufficient. Advances in the use of biomarkers require transdisciplinary teams to design studies and analyze findings.
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From page 51... ...
Early large-scale biosocial investigations tended to add fairly crude measures of one or the other domain depending on the original study framework with the result that failure to observe significant or strong biosocial associations led to aspersions on the whole
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From page 52... ...
Attrition in longitudinal surveys is a particular concern if data gathering becomes too onerous on respondents. As Hauser and Willis (2005, p.
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From page 53... ...
Advances in methodology for insuring data access while ensuring privacy and confidentiality have opened new possibilities (National Research Council, 2007, 2010)
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From page 54... ...
Epidemiologists ranked their perceptions and offered further comments on barriers, delays, and added costs of doing research because of the rule. On a 5-point Likert scale, 67.8 percent reported that the rule makes research more difficult, ranking this at 4 to 5; almost 40 percent gave a similar ranking when asked whether the rule had increased research costs; and 51 percent indicated that the additional time added by the rule to complete research projects was high.
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From page 55... ...
regularly convene consensus development conferences in collaboration with health research stakeholders to collect and evaluate current practices in privacy protection in order to identify and disseminate best practices for responsible research. As a practical matter, the panel recommended that HHS provide reasonable protection against civil suits brought pursuant to federal or state law for members of IRBs and Privacy Boards for decisions made within the scope of their responsibilities under the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the Common Rule (Institute of Medicine, 2009)
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