Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The Southampton Ageing Project is a longitudinal and multidisciplinary study of ageing that began in 1977. The study has been carried out in two distinct phases. The first phase was a three year study, from 1977-1980, and was concerned with the investigation of the health and well-being of a sample of people, over the age of 65 years. Participants completed a medical and psychometric assessment in addition to a psychosocial questionnaire. The second phase of the study involved the follow-up of survivors in 1988, 1990, 1993, 1995 and 1998 with a particular focus on self-esteem and identity.
Main Topics:
The dataset contains 14 assessments of medical, social and psychometric variables at various time points, including depression scales, self-esteem scales, life satisfaction questions, clinical and self-reported health measurements and psychometric items such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale items e.g. vocabulary and comprehension tests. Standard measures Wakefield Self-Assessment Depression Inventory; Montgomery-Aspberg Depression Rating Scale; WAIS items - verbal and comprehension and digit span tests; Raven's Progressive Matrices.
Two General Practices, deemed to be representative, were chosen. People over 65 years were then selected randomly from the practices. No selection procedures were carried out for follow-up. All patients alive and willing to take part were followed up.
Face-to-face interview
