Project 1 -- MIDUS Survey Project

ABSTRACT – SURVEY PROJECT The primary goals of the Survey Project are to collect a 2nd wave of survey data on the Refresher sample (MR2) (projected N = 2,655, 65% retention rate) and a 4th wave of data on the Core sample (M4) (projected N = 2,578, 70% retention rate). Included in both endeavors is follow-up of the Milwaukee samples of African Americans. All respondents will complete a phone interview (or personal interview for Milwaukee) and self- administered questionnaires, as were fielded in previous waves. Assessments include standard sociodemographics as well as comprehensive measures of physical and mental health, assessments of personality and validated psychosocial measures, behavioral factors, and chronic and acute stress exposures. A primary objective is to obtain new longitudinal data that will allow more precise and reliable estimates of change in key variables as well as strengthen opportunities for investigating psychosocial factors (negative and positive) as moderators or mediators of age-related changes in health. The new MR2 and M4 assessments will afford a window on such changes over 30 years for the Core sample (which began in 1995) and 10 years for the Refresher sample (which began in 2011). This will allow testing of key hypotheses about resilience and vulnerability, focused on SES moderators of health disparities as well as moderators of age-related changes in health. In addition, the next wave will include a new module on the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The module will repurpose and extend prior measures that assessed impacts of the Great Recession (e.g., changes to employment, finances, family life; new measures of pandemic-specific experiences, including impact of social distancing on work and family life, differential access to digital technologies, effects of virus on health of self and significant others). These assessments will be combined with past information on socioeconomic inequality, life stress exposures, psychosocial risk, and protective factors to predict unfolding profiles of health and well-being in the context of major historical events. The Survey Project serves as the hub from which all other projects emanate, making its efficient management of sample and data collection protocols essential for completing all aims and components of the MIDUS enterprise within the grant period. MIDUS offers extensive evidence of scientific productivity and public usage (1,617 publications; 26,000 users), more than half of which is based exclusively on data derived from the Survey Project.