# Constructing, Validating, and Testing the Predictive Power of Life-Course Health Histories

> **NIH NIH R21** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $239,832

## Abstract

Project Summary
In the project, "Constructing, Validating, and Testing the Predictive Power of Life-Course Health
Histories," we will create a comprehensive guide to help researchers discern whether and when
they can use retrospective health data from nationally representative surveys to create lifetime
health histories. Our project leverages enormous investments the scientific community has
made to measure population and individual health on cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys.
We will use data from four major surveys to create life histories for each survey respondent for
11 acute or chronic health conditions. We will then validate the constructed health histories,
comparing the prevalence of the condition for a given birth cohort in a past year against
contemporaneously measured prevalence rates for the same condition, demographic group and
in the same calendar year. We will develop our guide and data with attention to three major
factors that cause researchers to hesitate about using retrospective questions to generate life
health-histories – recall bias, similarities and differences in sampling rules and sample
characteristics, and selective mortality. Our overall aims are to conduct a “proof-of-concept”
exercise to explore whether and for what conditions one can use retrospective questions to
generate life health histories and to provide a guide for researchers to use. Our work products
will expand the set of questions researchers can address with retrospective health data already
collected on existing surveys. Our results will enable researchers to describe and study the
etiology of a wide range of health conditions that are currently difficult to study because of
sample size limitations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10064355
- **Project number:** 1R21AG066037-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Dean R Lillard
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $239,832
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-11 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10064355

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10064355, Constructing, Validating, and Testing the Predictive Power of Life-Course Health Histories (1R21AG066037-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10064355. Licensed CC0.

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