The National Institute on Aging-funded Stress Measurement Network, in collaboration with Gateway to Global Aging Data (see g2aging.org), produced by the Program on Global Aging, Health & Policy, University of Southern California, has recently completed the harmonization of psychosocial stress variables across nine longitudinal studies on aging from around the world.
These newly harmonized psychosocial stress measures allow researchers to compare and contrast relationships between stress constructs (e.g., exposures, responses, buffers) with health and aging outcomes, within and across different geographic and cultural contexts. The data are free to the public as part of the Health and Retirement Study family of studies and include data from the US, Europe, Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, and Costa Rica. The stress types that have been harmonized across each wave of these studies are stressful life events, traumatic events, chronic stress, childhood adversity, discrimination, loneliness, social isolation, relationship strain, work stress, and neighborhood safety.
To foster the utilization of this rich resource, the Stress Measurement Network will support five exemplar projects that examine cross-national relationships between stress and aging with mentorship from senior faculty, priority access to the harmonized data and the lead data programmer, statistical consulting, and a $2,500 honorarium.
Proposal Guidelines: Proposals should address: (a) the relationships among stress, health, and aging; (b) the moderators and/or mechanisms linking stress and health. Additional criteria: (1) Use a minimum of three unique studies from the nine national datasets; (2) specify which stress variables in particular will be used; (3) describe in broad terms the lens that culture will be conceptualized in the project (e.g. moderator, covariate). Proposals should be a maximum of 1000 words (excluding references, figures, tables) will be accepted until February 28, 2020. For further information on the available stress variables, see the Stress Measurement User Manual here; details on various health and aging outcomes can be found on the Gateway to Global Aging website here.
Eligibility: Applicants must be early career researchers (<10 years in faculty position). Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars may apply in collaboration with a mentor. Preference will be given to applicants with prior experience analyzing one of the datasets they are proposing to use.
Interim Presentation: PIs on selected projects should be prepared to present initial analyses via videoconference on June 24, 2020 at the Annual Meeting of the Stress Measurement Network. Upon successful completion of this presentation, an honorarium of $2,500 will be provided.
Contact: Proposals and questions should be directed to Dr. Alexandra Crosswell, Associate Director, Stress Measurement Network, Alexandra.Crosswell@ucsf.edu, with subject line: Harmonization project.
