48+ Cognition Module

Beginning in 2006, the survey included a battery of exercises designed to capture cognitive capabilities. Similar to the 50-and-over Health Module, the Cognition Module was administered to two birth-year cohorts in the survey year during which they would turn at least age 48. In 2006, the module was administered to respondents born in 1957-1958; in 2008, the module was administered to those born in 1959-1960 and age-eligible respondents who skipped the 2006 interview, and so on. 

Respondents were first asked for their own assessment of the current quality of their memory. They were then given a word recall exercise using four randomly assigned sets of 10 words. The numbers of correctly and incorrectly recalled words were recorded. Respondents were next asked to count backwards from 20, then from 86. Following this, they were given the starting point of 100 and asked to subtract 7; the process was continued five times (e.g., until the final subtraction answer should have been 65). Finally, respondents were asked to recall the same list of 10 words that they were given at the beginning of the cognition battery.

The vast majority of respondents completed the Cognition Module by the 2012 interview. A relatively small but not insignificant number of respondents, who missed the interview at their first eligible year for the Cognition Module and missed multiple interviews after that, took the battery in the 2014 or 2016 interview.

The 48+ cognition data from round 22 through round 27 (2006-2016) has been compiled into a single set of variables. Variable names for this set of items begin with "COGNITION" and are contained in the COGNITION area of interest. These items are assigned to the XRND survey year and do not identify non-interviewed cases for specific survey years. The variable COGNITION_SOURCEYR (Reference #X00311.00) contains the survey year in which each respondent's data was collected.

The 2018 interview included an independent cognition question to test verbal fluency in which respondents were asked to name as many animals as they could in 60 seconds (COGNITION-C5). 

The 2020 interview administered the 48+ Cognition Module to the full sample. This survey also used a set of cognition questions from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which asks the respondent for the full date and day of the week, names of the president and vice president, and words for two simple definitions (scissors and cactus).