Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Aging

A significant public health goal is to maximize healthspan, the period of life in which individuals remain relatively free of physical and cognitive impairment. Understanding the processes leading to change in health, physical function, and cognition is a major goal of several research networks for the analysis of longitudinal studies: The Integrative Analysis of Longitudinal Studies on Aging (IALSA), Quebec Consortium on Longitudinal Studies of Aging, and Healthy Ageing across the Lifecourse (HALCyon). This application for a research meeting will provide an important opportunity to facilitate the engagement of substantive researchers with statistical experts on longitudinal analysis and research synthesis with an emphasis on the comparison of results across independent studies. Replication of research findings across independent longitudinal studies is essential for a cumulative and innovative science. However, replication and extension of results from longitudinal studies is currently limited by the paucity of published information on particular research questions, differences in the research design, sample composition, measurements, statistical analysis, and practical limits on full reporting of results. In a cross-national context, a key challenge is the comparability of outcomes and covariates based on different measurement instruments that may also differ in language, difficulty, number of items, and range of measurement. However, the variety of samples, measurements, contexts, and research designs, particularly in the area of longitudinal aging research, is also an advantage for assessing the generalizability of research findings, referred to as generalized causal inference. This proposed meeting will facilitate the development and implementation of new statistical analyses for cross-study comparison and new methods for the synthesis and integration of research findings across studies affiliated with these major research networks.