Add Health becomes an aging study: conceptualization, history and Wave VI design, response, and descriptive health...

This paper describes the history and previous research contributions of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and provides an overview of the recently completed Wave VI (average age 44 years) design and content. We provide a comparison of basic Wave VI data with two major U.S. cross-sectional health studies. We then report descriptive distributions for several survey-based health measures in Wave VI, both for the overall cohort as well as for subgroups. Finally, we discuss ways that Add Health data can be used to make important contributions to the study of health and aging in the U.S. population.

Wave VI utilized a mixed-mode (web and in-person) survey design, with follow-up home examinations to collect biological data. Using weighted Wave VI survey data, we provide descriptive distributions of selected early midlife health measures by race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and sex.

Wave VI yielded 11,979 surveys, 6,073 home examinations, and thousands of contextual, environmental, and administrative variables. Self-reported survey data demonstrate the cohort's relatively poor health, including nearly one-half with a body mass index above 30 kg/m2 and 17% reporting current depression. There are wide disparities by race/ethnicity and educational attainment in every assessed health outcome.

Wave VI of Add Health broke new ground in transforming a study of U.S. adolescents and young adults into a study of early midlife adults. These rich longitudinal, multi-level (i.e., social, biological, and contextual), nationally representative data are a key resource for understanding health and aging in American society.