Division of Behavioral and Social Research

On November 29–30, 2011, BSR convened a workshop to explore harmonization strategies for behavioral, social science, and genetic research. The workshop brought together harmonization experts, principal investigators on harmonization projects, and staff from BSR, the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) is actively involved in the effort to fully understand and plan for the emerging costs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).  This teleconference featured presentations by Peter Neumann and Pei-Jung Lin (Tufts Medical Center) on “Costs and Cost-Effectiveness in Alzheimer’s Disease” based on modeling of Medicare claims data, and by Michael Hurd (RAND Corporation) on “The Costs of Dementia” based on data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and The Aging, Demographics,

Population Genetics Conference Call for the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was held as a follow-up to an expert meeting was held on September 23-24th of 2010 to discuss using GWAS to explore fundamental questions about aging in the HRS. There were no experts in population genetics able to attend the original meeting, so this call was convened to explore the potential work that can be done in this area.

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.

This one day exploratory workshop explored the use of economic phenotypes in large-scale research to promote an understanding of economic behavior.

This expert meeting was convened by the National Academies of Science, Committee on National Statistics, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, and was chaired by Connie Citro (CNSTAT) and Robert Wallace of the University of Iowa. The meeting was called to summarize the state-of-the-science in Elderly Mistreatment, identify gaps in knowledge, and elaborate on the types of work needed to advance the science since the National Research Council’s 2003 landmark publication Elder Mistreatment: Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation in an Aging America.

The purpose of this meeting was to bring professionals from different disciplines (psychologists, behavioral economists, social/affective and cognitive neuroscientists, and neuroeconomists) together to discuss mechanisms of motivation and their relation to self-regulation in aging and addiction. The meeting was jointly organized by the Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The workshop on Advancing Integrative Psychological Research on Adaptive and Healthy Aging, was held at the Institute for Personality and Social Research (IPSR) at the University of California, Berkeley one day prior to the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Convention in San Francisco. The meeting was jointly organized by the Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) at the National Institute on Aging and IPSR.

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.

The topic of this conference was assessing the value of health. NIA intends to incorporate economic valuations of disease into its decisions about allocating research funding. The purpose of the conference was to strengthen research in the field by developing a future research agenda. Conference results would also be useful to the World Health Organization and relevant to national health accounts research. The conference was attended by 21 experts representing NIA, leading academic institutions, the private sector, and the national media. See conference agenda.

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.

This symposium considered the best methods for training. Is training best done within the context in which it will be used (e.g., perceptual speed, memory, exercise, technology use)? Is multiple system training the best method, and how do we determine what systems are affected? What are the physiological correlates of training and transfer of training? What is the impact of social engagement on cognition? How should we define successful training? How long do training effects have to last to be successful? Who are the best candidates for cognitive training and why?

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) hosted a 1-day workshop on the NLMS and the LEHD, data sets partially sponsored by BSR but underutilized by grantees. The objective was to introduce these data sets to researchers from NIA’s 11 Demography Centers so they would think about using the data sets. The workshop provided participants the opportunity to learn what the new data sources provide, what issues they can be used to address, and how they can be obtained. More information about the data sets can be found below.

This one-day conference, sponsored by the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences (CBRSS) at Harvard University and NIA, convened a multidisciplinary group of social scientists to explore the potential for small, inexpensive and noncoercive psychological and sociological interventions to influence human behavior in a range of policy settings. Changing human behavior, even for someone's own good, can be a huge undertaking. This conference featured research from the fields of economics, social psychology, and public health.

This workshop explored issues related to incorporating environmental factors from the behavioral and social sciences into genetically informative studies of aging. Development of this area is critical to understanding central issues surrounding gene expression, including gene-environment interactions and covariation and gene expression (i.e., how it is affected by social contexts and behaviors). A special issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences (Vol. 60B, March 2005) was based on the presentations.

This meeting was sponsored by NIA's BSR and Neuroscience and Neuropsychology programs. The meeting addressed such issues as: (1) identification of gaps in knowledge about the impact of various contexts on cognition; (2) the feasibility of research on the confluence of different kinds of contexts on cognition; (3) the importance of natural versus artificial contexts; and (4) how findings from these types of studies can be conceptualized more generically.

This workshop engaged leading scholars in an exploratory discussion of the characteristics, causes, and consequences of disability decline in the US, specifically investigating what is known about disability trends and what should be learned from future research. The workshop identified agreed-on research findings related to disability trends; identified areas of ambiguity or disagreement; and developed foci for future investigations.