Data and Documentation
Americans' Changing Lives data and documentation from all four waves is available (http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04690) from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) for use by researchers around the world.
To download the ACL Waves I-IV codebook click on the button below.
To download the ACL Wave I-V questionnaires click on the buttons below.
The Americans' Changing Lives dataset and codebook cover all four waves of data collection (1986, 1989, 1994, and 2001/2002) and the following topical areas.
- Household Composition
- Social Integration
- Physical Activity
- Life Assessment and Self Assessment
- Marital Status and Marital Relationship
- Social Support
- Physical Environment
- Social Environment
- Child Care, Parenting and Household Work
- Health
- Limitation of Activities
- Health Risk Behavior
- Health Services
- Health Literacy/ Numeracy (Wave 5)
- End of life planning (Wave 5)
- Depression and Depressive Symptoms
- Employment
- Job Attitudes and Retirement/ Reason Stop Working
- Effects of Great Recession (Wave 5)
- Voluntary Activity
- Cognitive Functioning and Memory
- Personality Dispositions
- Life Events
- Discrimination and Vigilance
- Religion and Meaning
- Demographics and Socioeconomic Variables
The ACL1-4 interview schedules include major variables as follows:
| Concept | ACL Questionnaire Section | |||
| ACL1 | ACL2 | ACL3 | ACL4 | |
| Social Integration & Physical Activity | A | A | A | A |
| Life Satisfaction & Personality | B | B | B | B |
| Social Relationships & Supports | C | C | D | D |
| Marital Relationships & Events | D&E | D&E | C | C |
| Health/Health Behaviors,Medical Care | G,M&N | G,L&M | G,L&M | G,L&M |
| Psychological States/Traits | H | H | H | H & M |
| Productive Activities | F,J&L | J&K | F,J&K | F,J&K |
| Paid & Unpaid Work/Stress | J | J(paid) | J(paid) | J(paid) |
| Financial Stress | K | Q | Q | Q |
| Life Events & Burden of Caring | P | N&K | N | N |
| Religion & World Views | P | P | P | P |
| Demographics | R | Q | Q | Q |
| Physical/Social Environment | E | |||
| Perceptions of Discrimination | B | N | ||
Featured Findings
The Social Structuring of Mental Health over the Adult Life Course: Advancing Theory in the Sociology of Aging
The sociology of aging draws on a broad array of theoretical perspectives from several disciplines, but rarely has it developed its own. We build on past work to advance and empirically test a model of mental health framed in terms of structural theorizing and situated within the life course perspective. Whereas most prior research has been based on cross-sectional data, we utilize four waves of data from a nationally representative sample of American adults (Americans' Changing Lives Study) collected prospectively over a 15-year period and find that education, employment and marital status, as well as their consequences for income and health, effectively explain the increase in depressive symptoms after age 65. We also found significant cohort differences in age trajectories of mental health that were partly explained by historical increases in education. We demonstrate that a purely structural theory can take us far in explaining later life mental health. (Clarke, Philippa, Marshall, Victor W., House, James S., Lantz, Paula M., (2011). The Social Structuring of Mental Health over the Adult Life Course: Advancing Theory in the Sociology of Aging. Social Forces, 89(4), 1287-1314.)