Paper Accepted for Presentation At (2006)
BibTeX
@MISC{Meeting06paperaccepted,
author = {The Annual Meeting and Leonid A. Gavrilov and Natalia S. Gavrilova},
title = {Paper Accepted for Presentation At},
year = {2006}
}
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Abstract
A number of previous studies found interesting links between the early-life experiences and a subsequent mortality in later life. Such findings justify further advancement of these studies by exploring possible links between childhood conditions and exceptional longevity (survival to 100 years). However a number of methodological issues have to be resolved (such as data availability, quality, as well as research approaches), before starting a comprehensive research project on childhood predictors of exceptional longevity. This paper represents an attempt to do a preliminary study of related methodological issues in order to ensure feasibility of the subsequent large-scale research efforts. The following questions are explored in this study: Where to get data on exceptional longevity and childhood conditions? What is the quality of this data, and how can this data quality be checked and improved? What methods of data analysis to use? What are the hypotheses to test, and what are the preliminary findings to validate? The study presents a detailed analysis of available data resources on exceptional longevity and childhood conditions, a rigorous evaluation of data quality and testing different approaches to improve the quality of the data. As a result of these methodological explorations the following multi-step procedure of data collection and data cleaning has being suggested and tested in practice: Step 1. To extract data on alleged centenarians and their childhood conditions from computerized genealogies, pre-selected on the basis of their expected sufficient data quality (a number of indicators of data quality has been identified for this purpose). Following this procedure we extracted detailed family data for 991 alleged centenarians born in 1875-1899 in the United ...
Keyphrases
exceptional longevity childhood condition paper accepted data quality alleged centenarian data availability different approach preliminary study methodological exploration research approach early-life experience previous study subsequent large-scale research effort sufficient data quality rigorous evaluation comprehensive research project detailed family data related methodological issue methodological issue data analysis following question following multi-step procedure childhood predictor computerized genealogy later life available data resource data collection data cleaning detailed analysis preliminary finding subsequent mortality possible link
