The Health and Retirement Study, created by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is a major national panel providing data for researchers seeking to explore issues related to the health, decisions, choices and behaviors of individuals as they age. Housed at the University of Michigan, the survey draws responses from a representative sample of more than 26,000 Americans over the age of 50 every two years. The HRS is a valuable resource for health services researchers. It offers:
•Biennial survey data since 1992 with multi-disciplinary content
•Linked Medicare claims for over 18,000 participating HRS respondents
•A wide variety of public use and restricted files
•RAND-generated longitudinal files; derived variables covering a broad range of measures have been constructed and named consistently across waves
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program offered a webinar on best practices for obtaining and using HRS data for research. HCFO researcher Andrew Sfekas of Temple University shared his experiences in getting and working with HRS data. In addition, Helen Levy from the University of Michigan described the many exciting HRS public data products and provided resources, tips, and best practices based on her organization’s role as the NIA’s contractor assisting researchers in obtaining and working with HRS data.
Speakers:
•Helen Levy, Ph.D., is a Research Associate Professor in the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan
•Andrew Sfekas, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Fox School of Business, Temple University
A recording of the webinar is available at:
http://www.academyhealth.org/Training/ResourceDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=8201
NOTE: The table of contents box blocking the slides will fade after a few seconds and then the slides will be accessible.