How Does Marriage Get Under the Skin? An Integrative Social and Biological Approa

应聘者简介(申请人提供)：应聘者为初级学者，积极致力于婚姻与健康联系的研究。这个项目的动机是 利用拟议的生物医学培训以及应聘者在婚姻和健康方面积累的知识和研究经验，开发一种创新的、综合的方法来了解影响健康的婚姻关系的生物学过程。K01老龄化研究指导研究科学家发展奖将使候选人能够实现以下职业目标：1)应用在获奖期间获得的跨学科生物统计学培训，以促进对婚姻关系和健康之间潜在的生物学机制的科学理解；2)开发一个跨学科模型，研究生物和社会过程的相互作用，通过这些过程，婚姻关系在一生中影响健康；以及3)启动跨学科对话和项目开发，以培训有助于婚姻与健康联系的社会和生物互动的学者。科学的环境是加强这项研究的理想环境。敬业的指导教师和支持人员、出色的计算和IT资源，以及公认的学术成就，共同支持候选人的成功。培训计划包括人体生理学、人体心血管系统生物学、生物人口学和生物医学研究方法的入门课程和更高级的课程。导师、生物人口学家琳达·韦特和生物医学科学家唐娜·王将监督候选人的培训和学术发展。咨询团队由一名社会心理学家(Clifford Broman教授)、一名生物人类学家(Thomas McDade教授)、一名生物心理学家(Joseph Lonstein教授)和一名生物统计学家(傅文江教授)组成，将就各种理论、方法和研究设计问题提供指导和建议。通过培训，候选人将获得实现以下具体项目目标所必需的生物科学专门知识：目标1)检查婚姻传记与老年人心血管功能中反映的生物风险的关系；目标2)评估婚姻质量与老年人心血管功能中反映的生物风险的关系；目标3)开发一个二元模型，研究配偶的心血管生物风险如何相互关联；以及目标4)探索目标1-3中的年龄和性别差异。预期成果将为推动生物人口学方法的发展奠定基础，以整合人口学和生物学的理论和方法，并为在R01一级研究婚姻和其他类似婚姻关系(如同性和异性同居)的其他生物学反应提供一个创新工具。这项分析将利用来自国家社会生活、健康和老龄化项目(NSHAP)和健康和退休研究(HRS)的两个国家纵向数据集-这两个数据集都是NIA支持的数据集。将采用多水平混合效应模型和行为者-伙伴相互依赖模型来解决研究目标。这一奖项将使候选人成为生物人口学领域的独立调查员，拥有跨学科沟通婚姻与健康联系的知识和技能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate is a junior scholar who has been actively committed to the study of marriage and health links. The motivation for this project is to utilize the proposed biomedical training along with the candidate's accrued knowledge and research experience in marriage and health to develop an innovative, integrative approach to understand the biological process of marital relationships that affect health. A K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award in Aging Research will enable the candidate to achieve the following career goals: 1) to apply the interdisciplinary biodemographic training gained during the award period in promoting scientific understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms linking marital relationship and health; 2) to develop an interdisciplinary model for studying the interactions of biological and social processes through which marital relationships affect health over the life course; and 3) to initiate interdisciplinary dialogue and program development for training scholars in the social and biological interactions that contribute to marital links to health. The scientific environment is ideal to strengthen this research. Committed mentor faculty and support staff, excellent computing and IT resources, and recognized academic excellence combine to support the candidate's success. The training plan incorporates both introductory and more advanced levels of coursework on human physiology, human biology of cardiovascular system, biodemography and biomedical research methods. The mentors, biodemographer Linda Waite and biomedical scientist Donna Wang will supervise the candidate's training and scholarly development. The consulting team, composed of a social psychologist (Professor Clifford Broman), a biological anthropologist (Professor Thomas McDade), a biological psychologist (Professor Joseph Lonstein) and a biostatistician (Professor Wenjiang Fu) will provide guidance and advice on various theoretical, methodological and research design issues. Through the training, the candidate will gain the biological science expertise that is necessarily to achieve the following specific project aims: Aim 1) to examine how marital biography is related to biological risks as reflected in cardiovascular function among older adults; Aim 2) to assess how marital quality is related to biological risks as reflected in cardiovascular function among older adults; Aim 3) to develop a dyadic model to study how spouses' cardiovascular biological risks are related to each other; and Aim 4) to explore age and gender differences in Aims 1-3. The expected outcomes will set the stage for advancing biodemographic approaches to integrate demographic and biological theory and methods and provide an innovative tool for studying other biological responses to marriage and other marriage-like relationships (e.g., same-sex and different-sex cohabitation) at the R01 level. The analysis will draw upon two national longitudinal datasets from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)-both are NIA supported datasets. A multilevel mixed effects model and the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model will be applied to address the research aims. This award will establish the candidate as an independent investigator in biodemography with the knowledge and skills to communicate across disciplines about the marital links to health.