The first of these studies , also known as the Grant Study is about trying to discover if there is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? What makes us happy ? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grand parenthood, and old age. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years. The originators of the study believed that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. This study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” and would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” Normal was defined as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living."This study of successful men was pitched at easing “the disharmony of the world at large.”
Bock assembled a team that spanned medicine, physiology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, and social work, and was advised by such luminaries as the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and the psychologist Henry Murray. Combing through health data, academic records, and recommendations from the Harvard dean, they chose 268 students—mostly from the classes of 1942, ’43, and ’44—including John Kennedy, Ben Bradley and a few who later became senators, and measured them from every conceivable angle and with every available scientific tool.
One of the results the study sought was to answer the question " What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old?" The Grant Study men identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically. Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. What factors don’t matter? The study identified some surprises. Cholesterol levels at age 50 had nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, its significance diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.” Vaillant sums up: “If you follow lives long enough, the risk factors for healthy life adjustment change. There is an age to watch your cholesterol and an age to ignore it.”“It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors. “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
There is another study ,also carried out over 50 years, in Maryland on aging. Here individuals -- homemakers, retirees, doctors and myriad others -- are participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), the country's longest-running study of aging. Since 1958, a total of more than 1,400 volunteers have agreed to regularly undergo in-depth physicals and memory and other screenings conducted by the study's physicians. The resulting data thus span more than half a century and are a gold mine for researchers interested in the aging process. Because of the BLSA,for example, scientists now know that signs indicating that a person could be at risk for dementia and other cognitive diseases may appear 20 years before symptoms emerge.
Some gems from this ongoing study: BLSA researchers were able to disprove the long-held belief that people get crankier as they age. Using data collected from the study's participants, they found that personality traits don't generally change much after age 30: People who were cranky at 27 were likely to be cranky at 87. Also that older people were better able to handle stress than their younger counterparts, who tended to cope by becoming hostile or retreating into fantasy worlds. And in another finding, which I point out to my children, 50 BLSA men were given the equivalent of three martinis over the course of an hour to find out whether age influenced a person's ability to metabolize alcohol. Turns out the older participants were able to metabolize the alcohol just as well as their younger counterparts. However, older men did show greater impairment as a result of their consumption.
What struck me was that there were such long term investments in empirical studies lasting over decades and even more there were so many people willing to donate their time in the cause of science.
I wondered if there were similar studies in India.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span, and in sociology to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies track the same people, and therefore the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations. Because of this benefit, longitudinal studies make observing changes more accurate and they are applied in various other fields. In medicine, the design is used to uncover predictors of certain diseases.
No comments:
Post a Comment