Enhancing Project Talent: Early Life Impacts on Later Life Outcomes

1960年，美国研究所（AIR）通过收集广泛的数据，包括人口统计信息，认知测量，性格特征和兴趣，从440，000名高中学生，他们的老师和他们的指导顾问中发起了人才项目。此外，高中毕业后1年、5年和11年的跟踪调查增加了有关中学后教育、劳动力参与、家庭组建和兵役等经历的信息。凭借其庞大的，具有全国代表性的60多岁的队列样本，纵向设计和早期生活经历的广泛信息，Project TALENT非常适合作为老龄化主要纵向研究的基础，可以解决研究问题，例如什么特征预测健康结果，如阿尔茨海默病和健康差异。AIR目前正在设计这项研究，计划在2014年进行50年的随访。设计这项研究需要扩大研究小组对现有数据进行更多的分析。在其目前的格式中，自1970年代以来，843，000条记录和10，000个变量基本上没有变化，这些数据很难访问，而且很耗时，因此它们的使用往往受到限制。我们建议使数据和文件现代化，使其达到大学间政治和社会研究联合会和国家老龄问题计算机化数据档案馆的现行标准。这样做将恢复完整的数据集，并使数据易于获取和输入任何分析格式;使文件能够在数据收集和数据年份的可变级别上进行搜索;并将数据充分纳入NACDA收集。为了完成这项任务，来自AIR和NACDA的工作人员将合作，将AIR对人才项目的深入了解与NACDA最先进的档案专业知识相结合。我们的计划包括将“人才”项目纳入ICPSR的自动化爱马仕系统，这将使定期数据更新得以有效实施，并使文件的内容和格式标准化。此外，我们还将把Project TALENT数据文件从一系列多个文件重组为一个统一的集合，该集合由一个界面支持，允许用户对数据提取做出明智的决定。人才项目数据作为一个研究来源，今天仍然具有高度相关性，对现有数据的分析将为规划新的后续行动提供关键信息;加强数据和文件将大大增加研究人员获得这些数据的机会，并为计划中的未来发布人才项目奠定基础，包括增加相关的行政数据。人才项目的广泛性确保了它将继续为老龄化的原创研究提供新的机会，最值得注意的是有机会调查生命不同阶段的身体健康，认知功能，社会经济和人口因素之间的关系。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In 1960, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) initiated Project TALENT by collecting extensive data, including demographic information, cognitive measures, dispositional traits, and interests, from 440,000 high school students, their teachers, and their guidance counselors. In addition, follow-up surveys 1, 5, and 11 years after high school graduation added information about experiences such as postsecondary education, labor force participation, family formation, and military service. With its large, nationally representative sample of a cohort now in their sixties, longitudinal design, and extensive information on early life experiences, Project TALENT is uniquely suited to be the basis for a major longitudinal study of aging that can address research questions such as what characteristics predict health outcomes such as Alzheimer's disease and health disparities. AIR is currently designing this study, with plans for a 50-year follow-up in 2014. Designing the study requires increased analysis of the existing data by an expanded group of researchers. In its current format, with 843,000 records and 10,000 variables essentially unchanged since the 1970's, the data are difficult and time-consuming to access, and thus their use is often limited. We propose to modernize the data and documentation, bringing them up to the current standards of the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA). Doing so will restore the complete data set and allow for data to be easily accessed and input into any analysis format; enable documentation to be searchable at the variable level across data collections and data years; and fully integrate the data into the NACDA collection. To accomplish this task, staff from AIR and NACDA will collaborate, pairing AIR's in-depth knowledge of Project TALENT with NACDA's state-of-the-art archival expertise. Our plans include integration of Project TALENT into the ICPSR's automated HERMES system, which will allow for regular data updates to be efficiently implemented and for the standard content and format for documentation. Additionally, we will restructure the Project TALENT data files from a series of multiple files into a unified collection supported by an interface that allows users to make informed decisions about data extraction. Project TALENT data continue to be highly relevant today as a research source and analyses of existing data will provide critical information for planning the new follow-up; enhancing the data and documentation will greatly increase their availability to researchers, and will lay the groundwork for planned future releases of Project TALENT, including the addition of linked administrative data. The sheer breadth of Project TALENT insures that it will continue to offer new opportunities for original research on aging, most notably the opportunity to investigate questions about the relationship among physical health, cognitive functioning, socioeconomic, and demographic factors at different stages of life.