Lifelong health and wellbeing of the Scotland in Miniature : the 6-day sample of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947

The proposed programme of research involves a world-class team of researchers across many scientific disciplines who will collaborate to work on a unique resource for lifelong health and wellbeing. The resource is the data from the 6-Day Sample of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 (SMS1947). The SMS1947 tested the intelligence of almost every child born in 1936 and attending school in Scotland in June 1947. The 6-Day Sample were people born on the first of the even-numbered months. They were interviewed every year between age 11 and 27. The stored data include a large amount of personal information from age 11 to age 27 of a representative sample of the Scottish population. There is information on intelligence, health, social background, education, the home, interests, ambitions, and their parents. The research programme will discover what happened to these individuals and plot their life trajectories. Those still alive will be traced using national databases, and interviewed and tested at length with regard to many aspects of health and wellbeing. Those who have died will have their causes of death recorded. The sample will provide much new scientific material about the effects of childhood and early adulthood circumstances and capabilities on wellbeing across the rest of life. The aspects of well being studied will include education, social mobility, cognition, health, and stress. This is a time-limited window of opportunity to complete one of the most detailed surveys of any population ever undertaken. It deserves to be completed in a careful way. The team that is collaborating in this programme involves expert researchers in social geography, education, epidemiology, sociology (quantitiative and qualitiative), psychology, cognition, geriatric medicine, stress biology, and statistics. The team has plans for at least two dozen scientific reports from the project, and plans to bring the results to the interested public (young and old), and those interested in policy formation that affects older people.

We shall follow up the 1208 people born in 1936 who formed the 6-Day Sample of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 (SMS1947). They were interviewed yearly from age 11 (1947) to age 27 (1963). There remain huge amounts of untapped stored information from their childhoods and early adulthoods. Now in their mid-70s, there is a time-limited opportunity to understand the life courses of this ?Scotland in Miniature?. This proposal will: (1) revitalise and extend the 6-Day Sample; (2) undertake and disseminate original research on the resource across many collaborating disciplines; (3) support the data and make them available to others. Existing data will be collated for analyses by statistical and non-statistical means: e.g., textual replies from respondents that have never been analysed will be coded for statistical analysis and transcribed for textual analysis. New data will be gathered from national databases both contemporaneous with the original data and (through data matching) subsequently gathered, and by contacting and interviewing the surviving participants. Methods will range from advanced quantitative modelling to qualitative analysis of life history interviews, as appropriate to the diverse, collaborating work streams, each led by an internationally-renowned expert. These are: (a) Life course social movements (lead: Dibben, social geographer); (b) Life-long educational experiences (lead: Paterson, sociologist); (c) Social and cognitive epidemiology (lead: Batty, epidemiologist); (d) Narratives of life transitions, social participation, health and well-being (lead: Elliott, sociologist); (e) Lifelong cognitive change (lead: Deary, psychologist); (f) Health and wellbeing in old age (lead: Starr, geriatric physician); (g) Stress and wellbeing in old age (lead: MacLullich, geriatric physician); (h) Sample selection (lead: Johnson, psychometrician and actuarial mathematician). The 6-Day Sample is a necessary addition to the other British cohorts because: it is representative of Scotland; the data on childhood home environments are detailed; the data from age 11-27 are detailed; data are available in detail on the characteristics and histories of the schools they attended; their age now?mid-70s?is important and not covered by other cohorts, and will allow time-series comparison with the other cohorts in due course. The study will be based in the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, which is funded under the LLHAW initiative. The project will provide transformational science for life-long health and wellbeing: new cohort resource; high-impact publications; a database for other researchers; and policy information. Knowledge Exchange activity will deliver impact on health and social policy, and international recognition.