National Survey of the Japanese Elderly: A Cross-Cultural Aging Panel

The 1993 wave is part of the first and only panel study designed for cross-cultural analyses of aging between the United States and Japan. It was jointly conducted by the University of Michigan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, building on previous waves from 1987 and 1990. The survey's nine sections cover demographics, social integration, health, well-being, psychology, finances, memory, and interviewer observations.

Use Cases

• Analyzing longitudinal changes in health and social integration among the elderly based on panel data.
• Comparing psychological well-being and financial status across U.S. and Japanese cultural contexts.
• Studying the relationship between cognitive functioning, physical activity, and life satisfaction in older adults.
• Investigating the impact of life events and social supports on the aging process over time.

Strengths

• Represents a unique, cross-cultural panel study on aging, the first of its kind according to the descriptions.
• Designed for partial comparability with established surveys like 'Americans' Changing Lives' and the 'National Health Interview Survey Supplement on Aging'.
• Contains nine detailed thematic sections, suggesting a multi-faceted approach to measuring aging.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and specific file formats are not provided in any source.
• The dataset's last update date is unknown, raising questions about its current maintenance status.
• Multiple platform entries have identical or highly repetitive descriptions, indicating potential metadata duplication rather than enrichment.

Provenance

Source

Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan (IoG) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology (TMIG)

Collection Method

Panel survey, Wave IV follow-up to waves conducted in 1987, 1990, and 1993.

Time Range

1987-1993 (covering Waves I, II, and IV; Wave III year 1993 is explicitly mentioned for this entry).

Geography

Japan and the United States