Division of Behavioral and Social Research

Links between early prenatal and postnatal adverse experiences and physical and mental health in late adulthood have become well established.  Animal and human studies suggest that some of these risk persistence mechanisms are malleable. In fact, preventive interventions well into adult life may blunt or even reverse their negative effect on trajectories of health in aging individuals.

On September 10–11, 2012, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) convened a diverse team of experts to launch its Network on Reversibility. The purpose of the Network is to define the scope of future research initiatives and to marshal a trans-disciplinary approach in the development of such programs. The members of the Network will combine their expertise to develop new ideas on how to test the hypothesis that harmful effects of early environmental adversity can be reversed in adulthood.

Issues of research integrity and the replication of research findings are central concerns in all disciplines. These issues in the social and behavioral sciences have been receiving a great deal of recent attention. Current discussions have focused on strengthening the role of replication in advancing scientific knowledge, and recognizing and correcting false-positive results.

The Workshop on the Use of Well-being Measures in Policy Analysis was held November 2nd and 3rd, 2011, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The event was co-sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Brookings Institution, and was co-chaired by Lisbeth Nielsen of the NIA and Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution.

The goal of the conference call was to discuss gaps and themes that emerged at the NAS meeting held in September 2010, paying particular attention to how adding genetics to social surveys might be used to revise behavioral and social theory.

The second of two planned conferences convened by the Committee on Population (CPOP) at the National Academies of Science.  This conference, organized in conjunction with the Indian National Science Academy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, and Science Council of Japan and supported by NIA, assembled leading scientists to present the latest trends in population aging in Asia, to discuss the potential for greater international collaboration and to engage senior Asian policymakers and planners in dialogue.  A NAS publication, Aging in Asia:

Recent research has verified that personality traits predict a range of outcomes in aging including health, longevity, economic security and general well-being. In the field of aging research one of these five, conscientiousness, stands out as a singularly striking predictor, often over many years, of important health and economic outcomes for aging individuals. Research to date has been of good quality and many important findings have been replicated.

The U.S. National Institute on Aging, in collaboration with the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council commissioned the National Research Council Committee on National Statistics to convene two-day exploratory workshop on the application of subjective well-being measures to public policy. Leading academic and policy personnel from the US and UK explored the research needs and practical challenges surrounding the integration of measures of subjective well-being into the planning and evaluation of social and economic policies by local and national governments and agencies.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) commissioned the National Research Council Committee on Population to convene a two-day expert meeting to consider what data to collect on which traits and endophenotypes to optimize the HRS GWAS information as well as to explore ways in which the HRS can be harmonized with other types of large-scale studies to help uncover complex phenotypes attributable to genetics.

An exploratory teleconference on Conscientiousness and Healthy Aging was held to consider new directions in research on the links between personality and important aging outcomes.

This expert meeting was convened by the National Academies of Science, Committee on Population, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, and was chaired by Duncan Thomas of Duke University. The goal of the meeting was to foster better communication between researchers in the aging and disaster planning fields and to solicit suggestions for future research priorities in this area.

On August 2, 2008, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) convened a discussion of research, data, and training needs in the area of sociology research relevant to the NIA. The gathering was timed to coincide with the 103^rd annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston. This document summarizes points made during the presentations and discussion.

The NIA held a workshop to determine how integration of lifespan development and genetics can clarify developmental mechanisms promoting selected domains of social and emotional competence in aging. Researchers representing the fields of economics, molecular biology, epigenetic science, and behavioral research presented heir work and engaged in discussions focused on stability and change, the interplay between gene and environment, and gene expression and epigenetic mechanisms.

A exploratory workshop was held to consider what could be gained by adding genetic analyses to attempts to understand economic behavior. Economists, psychologists and neuroscientists discussed economic phenotypes, how these phenotypes could be measured, the level of analysis needed to assess individual differences within them, and how phenotypes might be influenced by aging. The workshop, chaired by David Laibson, David Reiss and Erica Spotts, fostered the exchange of ideas through formal presentations, invited commentary and general discussion.

To benefit from the possibility of exploiting cross-national differences to understand the effects of various policies, data collection efforts in various countries must be harmonized -- which means that conceptually comparable information be collected, and procedures (e.g., sampling and quality control) be synchronized to the extent possible. To this end, NIA convened a workshop to bring together data experts and the Principal Investigators of large national or cross-national datasets that are (or plan to be) harmonized with the U.S. Health and Retirement Study.

This one day workshop held at RAND covered a number of topics such as social determinants of health, end of life care and economic measurement issues.  The  participants and invited panelists discussed areas of emerging research in the economic valuation of health and the determination of disease costs.  A meeting summary is available.

As discussed in the National Research Council report Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa (2006), the impact of HIV/AIDS on adult mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa has reshaped the population structure and age distribution in most countries of this region, with important consequences for the elderly. A workshop in January 2007 considered research needs relevant to understanding the impact of HIV/AIDS on elders in Sub-Saharan Africa, and provided recommendations to NIA on a research agenda in this area.

Dr. Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, the Nobel Laureate in Economics whose work has revolutionized thinking about the history of health in the U.S., will appear with colleague Dr. Dora L. Costa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discuss findings from their NIA Program Project grant on the aging process of Union Army veterans. This ambitious project links vast amounts of information for a sample of Union Army veterans to allow researchers to study their aging process and compare it to that of later cohorts. Drs.

This workshop explored issues surrounding data sharing plans for NIA-sponsored behavioral and social research studies that collect human specimens (DNA and/or biologic data). Workshop participants considered the potential for deductive disclosure and risks to confidentiality and privacy resulting from the merging of biologic and genetic data with complex, deeply described phenotypes in social and behavioral research studies. The workshop presentations and discussions were intended to inform the development of NIA/BSR data sharing guidelines in this area.

The NIA asked the National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Population, to hold two expert meetings to discuss the National Long-Term Care Survey (NLTCS) and to consider future options for the survey. The first meeting was held on October 7, 2005. A follow-up meeting was held on Tuesday, February 14, 2006, which addressed in more detail policy and research uses of a continued NLTCS, and alternative options for scientific aims and survey designs.

The Center for the Study of Behavior and Development, in the Division of Behavioral and Social Science, National Academies of Science, in conjunction with BSR, conducted this meeting. Topics discussed included the neural basis of decision making, the design of health decision aids, the role of affect and emotion in decision making, the effects of age and social context on decision making, and aging and decision making competence. The meeting was exploratory, to help develop directions for future NIA research in this area.

Sponsored by NIA. The purpose of this meeting was to help NIA identify the most promising research opportunities related to macroeconomics and aging. Participants reviewed population aging in a global context, the size of the 60 and 80 populations, the health of the elderly, and variations across countries. It is likely that the links between population aging and macroeconomics are mediated by the institutional context (retirement policy and pension and health care systems) and the economic context (degree of integration into regional and global economies).

Sponsored by NIA, the meeting focused on inter-disciplinary work aimed at developing new, innovative approaches to policy questions. Based on the organizers' belief that a natural alliance exists between social psychologists and behavioral economists, their intent was to have top-notch scientists in these fields collaborate on developing interventions that could eventually be useful for a variety of health applications of interest to BSR/NIA.

The World Health Organization’s Multi-Country Studies team developed the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) to collect a range of valid, reliable, and comparable information on the health and well-being of older persons in low and middle income countries that could be used by national health information systems to fill critical information gaps. Data modules would include self-reported health assessments linked to anchoring vignettes and traditional measures of functioning combined with measured performance testing in various health domains.

There has been a noticeable trend in the growing complexity of decisions being faced in old age, e.g., pensions and benefit issues, portfolio investment decisions, pharmaceuticals, and health insurance options. BSR convened a small working group to share ideas in the area of decision making and aging. The presentations highlighted the importance of affect and motivation on judgments, probability perception, and decision making. Age differences in affective/experiential and deliberative processes have important theoretical implications for both theory and application.

The objective of this meeting hosted by the Social Sciences Research Council was to explore the “successes” (advances, breakthroughs, etc.) and “failures” (weaknesses, shortcomings, etc.) of the social and behavioral sciences in the field of aging in the last 30 years. The focus was on discussions pertaining to where, when, and why social and behavioral science advances have occurred in the area of aging.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has an ongoing project on the foundations of disability decline, what might be done to extend and accelerate future improvements in functional ability, and how the benefits of disability decline can be evaluated in economic terms. A group of economists, demographers, epidemiologists, and physicians are examining the causes and characteristics of past disability trends to identify the core foundations of disability decline, and to think about improving functional ability in the future.

BSR organized a 1-day meeting on effective uses of physical performance measures in population-based studies (as opposed to the self-reported measures of disability which have historically been used). This meeting reviewed existing performance protocols and discussed several important issues relating to use of performance measures in population-based studies. BSR developed a consensus document that outlined the various physical performance protocols available for use in various studies of aging.

The World Health Organization’s Multi-Country Studies team developed the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) to collect a range of valid, reliable, and comparable information on the health and well-being of older persons in low and middle income countries that could be used by national health information systems to fill critical information gaps. Data modules would include self-reported health assessments linked to anchoring vignettes and traditional measures of functioning combined with measured performance testing in various health domains.

Workshop participants provided expertise across a wide range of fields: numerical cognition, quantitative and document literacy, mathematics, judgment and decision-making, neuropsychology, and behavioral economics. The specific topics covered at the workshop included: age-related changes in numerical processing strategies; proportional and probabilistic reasoning processes; estimation skills, investment, and risk-taking behaviors; and financial abilities in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

This meeting explored directions for developing behavioral genetics and aging research. It included experts on human studies of behavioral genetics and aging and experts on animal and model organisms. A special issue of Journal of Behavior Genetics (Vol. 33, March 2003) was based on the presentations.

The Division of Neuroscience, NIA cosponsored this exploratory workshop with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body disease (LBD) are perhaps the most common causes of dementia in the elderly. There is a substantial clinical overlap among the dementias associated with Alzheimer's disease, LBD, and Parkinson's disease (PD). Dementia develops in all patients with Alzheimer’s disease and LBD and in approximately 20 to 30 percent of patients with PD.