Effects of Education on Cognitive Aging: Extending the Utility of Population Representative, Longitudinal Studies in Education

• In Event: Successful Mixed-Methods and/or Multidisciplinary Team Approaches to the Study of Racial Justice/Injustice in Education

Abstract

Research Question: Cognitive impairment and dementia are major social problems that disproportionately impact people of color in later life. Indeed, one in nine adults over age 65 will develop Alzheimer’s disease or related dementia (Matthews et al., 2019), and many more people of all ages will be impacted through devastating effects on families and loved ones. Educational gradients in the incidence of dementia are pronounced (Hayward, Farina, Zhang, Kim, & Crimmins, 2021), making education policy among the most promising area for intervention to protect our population, yet we have very little understanding of what is needed. How, why, and for whom does education provide protection from cognitive impairment as people age? The pathways through which education impacts cognitive aging are complex and multifaceted; to understand them requires a multidisciplinary, mixed methods approach. This presentation describes Education Studies for Health Aging Research (EdSHARe), a multidisciplinary, mixed methods project extending the utility of the older National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) cohort studies, High School and Beyond (HS&B; (Authors, 2022)) and the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 (NLS-72), of Secondary Longitudinal Studies Program (SLSP) to understand the effects of education on aging.
Methods: EdSHARe PIs have designed studies to (1) recontact and re-interview sample members of HS&B and NLS-72; (2) administer neurocognitive assessments; (3) collect biometric data that includes physical measurements, blood and saliva, and brain scans; and (4) match administrative and commercial data to unit records. Combined, the multiple sources of information provide a rich portrait of the social lives, work and financial well-being, health, and biometric markers of risk of cognitive impairment of population that completed high school in the early 1970s and early 1980s. Linking these factors, which are known to be associated with cognitive functioning in later life, to students’ earlier experiences in our nation’s high school and post-secondary institutions provides important information about potential education policy levers to protect our population from cognitive impairment. Importantly, the design of the SLSP allows researchers to study trends and patterns of students’ educational experiences across cohorts. The indicators of education can be used to understand how young people’s education today might offer protection from cognitive impairment in future generations.
Conclusions: Considerable evidence suggests that students’ experiences in school, through courses that they take, relationships that they build, and other processes that impact learning and socialization, shape their educational attainment and workforce success. These patterns have been observed in the SLSP cohorts, other nationally representative studies in the U.S., and internationally. The later life follow-ups of HS&B have shown that school experiences, especially coursework in math and science, contributes to health (Authors, 2023) and longevity (Authors, 2020), as well. Extending the utility of the rich data from the SLSP cohort studies to investigate the long run effects of education on America’s most vexing public health problems illustrates the potential power of broad-based teams to build crucial data infrastructures. The presentation will conclude with lessons learned from a decade of work to actualize the vision.

Authors

• Chandra Muller, University of Texas at Austin

• Eric S. Grodsky, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• John R. Warren, University of Minnesota