Research Resources

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more than 55,000 individuals from 20 European countries aged 50 or over. Israel joined SHARE in 2004. The first wave of data collection was conducted in Israel between October 2005 and July 2006, among 1771 Israeli households. A total of 2598 men and women were interviewed face-to-face. The second wave of data collection started in August 2009 and ended in August 2010, making longitudinal data available.

The SGIM Research Dataset Compendium is designed to assist investigators conducting research on existing datasets, with a particular emphasis on health services research, clinical epidemiology, and research on medical education. The detailed information provided by the SGIM compendium distinguishes it from other web-based compendia, which typically provide lists of datasets but give little information about their strengths and weaknesses and the insights of experienced users about making best use of the data.

The Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) is run by the World Health Organization's Multi-Country Studies unit in the Information, Evidence and Research Cluster. SAGE is part of the unit's Longitudinal Study Programme which is attempting to compile comprehensive longitudinal data on the health and well-being of adult populations, and the ageing process across different countries, through primary data collection and secondary data analysis.

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more than 85,000 individuals (approximately 150,000 interviews) from 19 European countries (+Israel) aged 50 or over. SHARE responds to a Communication by the European Commission calling to "examine the possibility of establishing, in co-operation with Member States, a European Longitudinal Ageing Survey.” SHARE is centrally coordinated by Axel Börsch-Supan, Ph.D. at the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA), Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy. It is harmonized with the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and has become a role model for several ageing surveys worldwide.

The Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA) provides a unique opportunity to understand individual differences in aging. The twin design and the inclusion of twins reared apart makes it possible to study the importance of genetic and environmental factors that may underlie differing aging outcomes. Further, the broad spectrum of biological, psychological, and social domains assessed across the life span makes it possible to study patterns of change within and across domains and how these predict health and diseases of aging.

The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) aims to collect a high quality nationally representative sample of Chinese residents ages 45 and older to serve the needs of scientific research on the elderly. The baseline national wave of CHARLS is being fielded in 2011 and includes about 10,000 households and 17,500 individuals in 150 counties/districts and 450 villages/resident committees. The individuals will be followed up every two years. All data will be made public one year after the end of data collection.

The Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) is an objective assessment tool for evaluating lower extremity functioning in older persons. It was developed by the National Institute on Aging and is available for use without permission or royalty fees. This site will allow you to download the contents of a training CD that includes comprehensive instructions on the administration of the battery, safety tips, a scoring sheet and background information on publications that support the methodology. These files may be used on your computer or written to a CD. A cover for the CD case is also available for downloading and printing.

Download the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) tool here.

The Clin-STAR Database is a search tool that enables collaboration among clinician-scientists in aging research across disciplines and career levels. Use the database to browse or search information on researchers and their institutions, publications, and funded grants. Researchers can create and update their free profile to share details on their research with colleagues and indicate their interest in becoming a mentor. Profiles are searchable to help users identify possible mentors or collaborators.

Textrous! is a web-based framework for the extraction of biomedical semantic meaning from a given input gene set of arbitrary length. Textrous! employs natural language processing techniques, including latent semantic indexing , sentence splitting, word tokenization, parts-of-speech tagging, and noun-phrase chunking, to mine MEDLINE abstracts, PubMed Central articles, articles from the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, and Mammalian Phenotype annotation obtained from Jackson Laboratories.

The Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR) provides high quality, next-generation sequencing, genotyping, and supporting statistical genetics services for qualifying NIH-funded investigators seeking to identify genes that contribute to human health and disease. NIA is one of 10 member institutes at NIH that support the CIDR program. Both intramural and extramural investigators may apply for access to CIDR services through a competitive, peer-reviewed process. Information about the CIDR program and how to apply for CIDR services is available.