Incorporating the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) into the Gateway to Global Aging Data: Statistical Harmonization

摘要 全球老龄化数据门户（g2aging.org）是一个数据和信息平台，旨在促进对老龄化问题的纵向和跨国分析，特别是那些使用世界各地健康和退休研究系列的分析。该网关为46个国家的18项调查的元数据编制了索引，并创建了27 449个关键的统一变量，涉及人口统计、健康、金融和住房财富、收入、家庭结构、退休、就业史、认知、消费、医疗保健和养老金，用于跨波/跨国分析。最近，我们纳入了来自三个国家的新的统一认知评估协议（HCAP）数据，美国的HRS-HCAP，墨西哥健康与老龄化研究的MEX-COG和印度LASI-DAD的纵向老龄化研究，为进一步研究这三个国家的阿尔茨海默病和阿尔茨海默病相关痴呆（AD/ADRD）提供了机会。此后，英国老龄化纵向研究（艾尔莎）向公众发布了其HCAP数据ELSA-HCAP，智利版HCAP Chile-COG于2019年8月至12月收集，并将于今年晚些时候公开发布。在这个应用程序中，我们的目标是将ELSA-HCAP和智利-COG纳入全球老龄化数据门户。与协调的HRS-HCAP、MEX-COG和LASI-DAD一样，我们将确定常见的认知测试和线人报告，构建协调的测量方法，并将可比数据文件传播给更广泛的用户社区，促进对晚年认知、AD/ADRD的研究在两个新国家，英国和智利。通过这样做，我们将节省单个研究人员在构建此类措施方面的时间和精力，并消除分析数据构建中的潜在错误，提高研究结果的可复制性，并加速认知，AD/ADRD相关主题的科学进步。此外，我们的目标是建立一个用户社区，并通过组织网络研讨会和支持面对面的研讨会来鼓励对晚年认知和AD/ADRD的比较研究，以促进HCAP数据的使用。建议增加新的HCAP数据和用户培训将有助于感兴趣的研究人员利用新的可用数据，以更好地了解认知下降和AD/ADRD的原因和后果。

Abstract The Gateway to Global Aging Data (g2aging.org) is a data and information platform developed to facilitate longitudinal and cross-country analyses on aging, especially those using the family of Health and Retirement Studies (HRS) around the world. The Gateway has indexed metadata from 18 surveys in 46 countries and has created 27,449 key harmonized variables on demographics, health, financial and housing wealth, income, family structure, retirement, employment history, cognition, consumption, health care, and pension for cross-wave/cross-country analysis. Most recently, we incorporated newly available Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) data from three countries, the HRS-HCAP in the United States, the Mexican Health and Aging Study’s MEX-COG, and the Longitudinal Aging Study in India’s LASI-DAD, offering the opportunity to further study Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias (AD/ADRD) in these three countries. Since then, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) released its HCAP data, ELSA-HCAP, to the public, and the Chilean version of HCAP, Chile-COG was collected in August-December 2019 and will be available for public release later this year. In this application, we aim to incorporate the ELSA-HCAP and Chile-COG into the Gateway to Global Aging Data. As with the Harmonized HRS-HCAP, MEX-COG, and LASI-DAD, we will identify common cognitive tests and informant reports, construct harmonized measures, and disseminate the comparable data files to the wider user community, facilitating research on late-life cognition, AD/ADRD in two new countries, England and Chile. By doing so, we will save individual researchers’ time and effort in constructing such measures and eliminate potential errors in analysis data construction, improving the replicability of findings and accelerating scientific advances in cognition, AD/ADRD related topics. Furthermore, we aim to build a user community and encourage comparative studies of late-life cognition and AD/ADRD, by organizing webinars and supporting in-person workshops to facilitate the use of the Harmonized HCAP data. The proposed addition of newly available HCAP data and user training will facilitate interested researchers to exploit newly available data to better understand the causes and consequences of cognitive decline and AD/ADRD.