Data

Data for the current study were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; Sonnega and Weir, 2014). The HRS is a nationally representative, longitudinal study that began in 1992 and surveys Americans aged 51 years and older every two years. The HRS collects extensive data on demographics, cognitive functioning, social and physical health characteristics. Starting in 2006, participants were also administered the HRS Leave-Behind Participant Lifestyle Questionnaire (Smith, Ryan, Sonnega, & Weir, 2017) which collects psychosocial and lifestyle data from participants. While core HRS items--which includes measures of cognitive function--are administered biannually, half of the HRS sample receives the Leave Behind Questionnaire at one administration year, while the other half receives the Leave Behind Questionnaires at the next administration year. Thus, all participants receive the Leave Behind Questionnaire every four years. In order to maximize sample size with items from the Leave Behind Questionnaire, the half-samples from two administration cycles were combined in this study. Information about all HRS instruments, sampling procedures, and study design are publicly available online (http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu).

HRS participants’ data from the 2012 and 2014 waves were used for this cross-sectional study. Exclusion criteria were employed such that participants with missing data on the following measures were excluded from the analytic sample: immediate memory (n=447) and delayed memory (n=451) total scores, discrimination mean from the Leave Behind Questionnaire (n=238), age (n=0), gender (n=0), race (n=38), and Hispanic ethnicity (n=14), highest degree (n=110), region (n=38), and urbanicity (n=51). This resulted in a final sample size of N=2,347. Compared to those with data on all components in the final analytic sample, dropped cases were older, had significantly worse episodic memory, lower levels of education, and more lived in urban areas. There was no significant difference between the final analytic sample and dropped cases on gender, region, discrimination. Characteristics of the final sample are summarized in Table 1. This sample was reduced further to a final analytic N=2,169 when accounting for the complex design of the sample during analyses.

Participant Demographics (N=2,347)

Note. Means and standard deviations presented for continuous variables and frequencies and percentages for categorical variables.

Note. Region was dichotomous (1 = Other (O); 2 = South (S))

Note. Group differences at p < .05

Education: 0=No Degree, 1=GED, 2=High school Diploma, 3=Degree unknown/Some College, 4=Two year College Degree, 5= Four year College Degree, 6= Master Degree, 7=Professional degree (Ph.D., M.D., J.D.). Education was treated as continuous in the model