We propose a collaborative, multidisciplinary program of projects on aging and the life course that will both exploit and add to core resources of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). The program will use existing longitudinal data and new data, collected 45 years after the 1957 high school graduation of the original 10,317 participants. We are more than 50 investigators and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin and across the nation. We want to exploit the unique scientific value of the WLS, along with other relevant and comparable data on population aging, to pursue a broad agenda of research on social and economic factors in health and aging. We represent diverse scientific fields - sociology, demography, epidemiology, economics, social and cognitive psychology, industrial engineering, neuroscience, social work, psychiatry, nursing, and medicine. Our analytic work will reflect and, we hope, intermingle the full range of theories, models, and methods of our home disciplines. Regardless of individual and collective plans, all WLS data will be released to the research community as soon as they can be collected, cleaned, and documented. We will recruit, encourage, and support a cadre of researchers (and researchers-in-training) at the UW-Madison and elsewhere who will fully exploit the unique resources of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We will supplement existing and new WLS data with linked data from individual administrative records, organizational records, and small area data. We will disseminate WLS data by several means including both public and secure access. We will sponsor and organize local and extramural seminars and workshops to encourage use of WLS data and to report research in progress, and we will organize a small project competition and workshops to encourage innovative uses (and new users) of WLS data. We will provide common resources and avenue for productive scientific interaction for an initial set of seven major analytic research projects that will use data from the WLS: Social and Behavioral Contexts of the Aging Mind; End-of-Life Planning and Well-Being in Late Life; Non-normative Parenting Impacts in Midlife and Old Age; Access to Care and Health Outcomes in the Near Elderly; Work, Health, and Well Being; Education in Careers, Health, and Retirement; and The Emotional Brain Across the Life Course.
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