Terman Life-Cycle Study of 1,528 High-Ability Children, United States, 1922-1991

United States longitudinal study tracking 1,528 children identified in 1922 as being in the top one percent of intelligence. The research, led by Lewis M. Terman, followed the cohort for over sixty years through questionnaires, interviews, and tests, with the latest interviews conducted in 1986. Data covers health, development, education, career, family, income, attitudes, and later-life aging.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term career and income trajectories based on educational and vocational history data.
• Analyzing patterns of personal adjustment and emotional stability over the life cycle.
• Studying the relationship between early intellectual ability and later-life health and activity patterns.
• Investigating socio-political attitude formation and evolution across decades.

Strengths

• Longitudinal design spanning over 60 years from 1922 to at least 1986.
• Original cohort of 1,528 individuals provides a substantial sample for a long-term study.
• Data collection includes multiple methods: questionnaires, personal interviews, and test instruments.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; data freshness beyond 1991 is unverified.
• Data may reflect temporal and demographic biases of the early 20th-century United States cohort.

Provenance

Source

Lewis M. Terman et al.

Collection Method

Children identified via intelligence test, with follow-up via questionnaires, personal interviews, and test instruments.

Time Range

1922-1991

Freshness

Data collection concluded with the surviving cohort in 1986; the dataset description references coverage through 1991.

Geography

United States