NHATS Joint Trajectories of Physical Function and Cognition, 8-Year Longitudinal

8-year longitudinal data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) tracks 6,175 older adults, representing 35.4 million individuals. The dataset likely contains joint trajectories of objective physical function and cognitive decline, used to identify phenotypes and assess dementia risk. It was authored by Shiyi Wang and last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Identifying phenotypes like 'Dual Rapid Decliners' based on joint functional trajectories.
• Analyzing the temporal precedence between physical decline and cognitive decline.
• Evaluating the mediating role of life space constriction on incident dementia risk.
• Testing the moderating effect of sensory impairment on dementia risk pathways.
• Improving exploratory diagnostic modeling by incorporating physical metrics.

Strengths

• Includes 8-year longitudinal data from a nationally representative study.
• Based on a sample of 6,175 older adults representing 35.4 million individuals.
• Identified four distinct phenotypes, including a group with a nearly five-fold increased dementia risk.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary data file is a PDF (551.7 KB), which likely contains summary results rather than raw tabular data.

Provenance

Source

National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS)

Collection Method

Parallel-Process Latent Class Growth Analysis (LCGA) and Cross-Lagged Panel Models (CLPM) applied to longitudinal survey data.

Time Range

8-year longitudinal study period.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-22 05:36:36; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States (population-based cohort).