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Researchers used Add Health data to show that earlier onset of puberty in girls can have lasting effects on mental health. Past research has shown that early menarche (first menstrual period) is associated with worse mental health in adolescence, but no such studies follow their respondents into adulthood. This is most likely not because of lack of interest, but due to the difficulties involved in following respondents over a long amount of time. Add Health data is perfectly poised to fill this gap.

Researchers from Cornell, Georgetown, and the University of Pittsburgh found evidence of these lasting effects using Add Health data. Data from Wave I (when respondents were in grades 7-12) confirmed previous knowledge that earlier first periods go hand-in-hand with more depressive symptoms at adolescence, as well as with engaging in more antisocial behaviors in adolescence, including behaviors like damaging property, stealing, and breaking into buildings, among others. Data from Wave IV, when respondents were between 24 and 34 years old, also confirmed that these trends continued into adulthood.

Now that doctors have this information, researchers suggest that pediatricians may want to pay more attention to early periods, especially since the average age of menarche has been decreasing over time.

Scholarly source: Mendle, Jane; Ryan, Rebecca M.; McKone, Kirsten M. P. (2018). Age at menarche, depression, and antisocial behavior in adulthood. Pediatrics, 141(1), e20171703.

Your genes and those of your friends are likely to be more similar than yours compared to a complete stranger, Add Health data shows. That’s not because we actively seek out people with similar genes—rather, our social environment and background naturally result in our ending up more likely to become friends with people who are similar to us. This is an important development because while geneticists have long considered the effects of our genome on traits like educational attainment, we now know that we also need to consider the reverse effect.

The equation grew more interesting when the researchers compared schoolmates’ genomes. Classmates were about half as genetically similar as friends and significantly more similar than unaffiliated individuals — which suggests that a shared environment and background may account for a good chunk of the genetic likeness observed among friends, Domingue explains. That, in turn, underscores how closely genetics and social circumstances are linked.

Read the story in TIME: Friends Are More Similar Genetically Than Strangers, Study Says by Jamie Ducharme, January 12, 2018.

Scholarly source: Domingue, B. W.; Belsky, D. W.; Fletcher, J. M.; Conley, D.; Boardman, J. D.; and Harris, K. M. (2018). The social genome of friends and schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(4), 702–707.

Add Health recently released the data file for Wave V Sample 1. The file contains data from 3,872 of the Wave V Sample 1 respondents. The respondents completed the survey between March 2016 and March 2017.

To request the data file, contract researchers must complete the form available here. This data file is available via Restricted-Use contracts only. The $150 fee required for the Wave V preliminary data will cover ALL Wave V data to be released in the future.  Researchers new to Add Health can download and complete the Restricted-Use Data contract form here. There will be no Public-Use Data release for Wave V Sample 1.

More information about Restricted-Use Data contracts is available here. Please contact Add Health Contracts with any questions.

Read media coverage on this study from WUNC and The Herald-Sun.

(Chapel Hill, N.C. — Dec. 18, 2017) – A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that black and Hispanic young adults from disadvantaged childhoods do not enjoy the same health-promoting benefits of college completion as their upwardly mobile white peers. The paper is the first to document improved mental health but worse physical health risk associated with college completion among disadvantaged minority young adults and it illustrates the importance of programs and policies that support the upward mobility of minorities.

“Our findings provide a piece of the puzzle for why racial disparities in health persist at equal levels of education,” says senior author Kathleen Mullan Harris, James Haar Distinguished Professor at UNC and faculty fellow at UNC’s Carolina Population Center (CPC). “The physical health of disadvantaged minorities who manage to get ahead and achieve upward mobility is compromised in young adulthood.”

The study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), the largest, most comprehensive longitudinal study of adolescents ever undertaken. First interviewed in the mid-1990s, the adolescents have been followed for more than 20 years into young adulthood. The research team used characteristics of the adolescents’ family, neighborhood, and school environment to measure socioeconomic disadvantages in early life. Among those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the researchers then contrasted depression and metabolic syndrome (a cluster of physical health conditions that increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes) for college graduates and non-college graduates in young adulthood among whites, blacks, and Hispanics.

Lauren Gaydosh, postdoctoral scholar at CPC and the study’s first author, along with Harris and colleagues examined depressive symptoms as an outcome of mental health, and metabolic syndrome as a measure of physical health. The team found that college graduates had lower depression in young adulthood regardless of childhood socioeconomic background, race, or ethnicity. But the study suggests that while whites who complete college had lower rates of metabolic syndrome than non-graduates, blacks and Hispanics from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to have metabolic syndrome if they completed college, compared to those who did not complete college.

Take for example two individuals who were raised in severely disadvantaged backgrounds – one who completes college, and the other does not. Our statistical analyses predict that if these two individuals are white, the college graduate is 3 percentage points less likely to have metabolic syndrome than the non-graduate (31 percent compared to 34 percent). If the two individuals are black, the pattern is reversed; the black college graduate is 9 percentage points more likely to have metabolic syndrome than his/her less educated peer (43 percent compared to 34 percent). Similarly, for Hispanics, the college graduate is 8 percentage points more likely to have metabolic syndrome than the non-graduate (45 percent compared to 37 percent).

The study was published on December 18^th in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (an embargoed version is available on the EurekAlert link below).

“American minorities we studied, who strive to overcome backgrounds of socioeconomic disadvantage by completing college, continually face barriers that impede their progress and inflict wear and tear on their bodies,” says Gaydosh.

“We found upwardly mobile minorities are psychologically hardy, which may in part explain how they are able to persevere in the face of significant adversity. But the constant effort needed to overcome obstacles blocking their opportunity —discrimination, isolation — is stressful, and takes a toll on their physical health.”

“It’s clear that there is something distinct about achieving upward mobility for minorities in the United States that prevents them from receiving the same health benefits as whites,” Harris adds. “We have yet to see whether such health risks continue through adulthood, or whether later in life they are able to translate their new socioeconomic advantage into health protection. But we collectively need to develop programs and policies that make success more common and less stressful.”

The National Institutes of Health funded the study through grants to Gaydosh and Harris from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 77 bachelor’s, 111 master’s, 65 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools and the College of Arts and Sciences. Every day, faculty, staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s more than 322,000 alumni live in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 165 countries. More than 175,000 live in North Carolina.

The embargoed article can be directly accessed at the following link: https://www.eurekalert.org/emb_releases/2017-12/potn-cca121317.php for those registered with EurekAlert (http://www.eurekalert.org/register.php).

Media Contact: Audrey Smith; (919) 445-8555; mediarelations@unc.edu

Author Contacts: Kathleen Mullan Harris: 919-824-3466, kathie_harris@unc.edu; Lauren Gaydosh: 732-809-0050, lgaydosh@live.unc.edu

How a researcher defines the parameters of their study can drastically affect the results. In past studies, findings regarding same-sex relationship stability vary depending on how researchers decided what constitutes a relationship. For example, do you count only couples who are formalized, as in marriages or domestic partnerships? Or do you expand that definition to include partners who live together or couples who are only dating?

A problem with doing research on relationships involving same-sex couples and defining relationship in the first way—i.e., formalized relationships only—is that it ignores the fact that people in same-sex couples have more barriers and difficulties surrounding relationship formalization. Even though acceptance of non-heterosexual relationships has been steadily rising, it can still be difficult to tell friends and family about a partner of the same sex, let alone go to a courthouse to get a marriage license. Because of this, formalized relationships do not happen as often for people who are part of same-sex couples.

Add Health, on the other hand, asks each respondent to consider her most recent relationship—whatever that means to the participant herself. It also asks for details about that relationship, such as how long it has been going on, whether the couple lives together, and so on. For that reason, researchers at Bowling Green State University used Add Health data to shed light on aspects of same-sex relationships that had been difficult to pin down in previous studies.

They found that the relationships of female same-sex couples who live together tend to end in breakup more so than male same-sex couples who live together, which corroborates past research that typically focuses on only couples who live together. However, when the researchers looked at all types of relationships and controlled for the length of the relationship—rather than cohabitation—they found that male same-sex couples actually have the highest breakup rate of all. This finding underlines both how important these definitions are in research and how institutions and formalization are still not part of the picture for many same-sex couples.

View the abstract or download the complete article from Demography.

Authors:

• Kara Joyner, Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University
• Wendy Manning, Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University
• Ryan Bogle, Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University

More than half of US children between 2 and 19 years old as of 2016 will be obese by the time they hit 35, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine speculates. The study’s authors used data from Add Health and four other longitudinal studies to create a simulation of respondents’ height and weight over the course of their lives. They also modified the simulation so that it accounts for trends shown in the data over time. Put all that together and you can predict—to a degree—how children born in the past few years will fare as they continue to grow.

Of the categories of BMI classification (underweight or normal weight, overweight, moderate obesity, and severe obesity), children who are currently underweight or normal weight have the best likelihood of not becoming obese by 35, a probability that increases with age: 2-year-olds who are underweight or normal weight have a 43.5% probability of becoming obese by 35, while under- or normal weight 19-year-olds have a 69.7% probability of the same. Basically, the longer a child remains at a BMI classified as underweight or normal weight, the lower the probability they will become obese by the time they turn 35.

What’s more, the opposite is true of children whose BMIs are classified as overweight, moderate obesity, or severe obesity: The likelihood that a 2-year-old in any of these categories will be obese at 35 is lower than that of a 19-year-old. Essentially, the longer a child remains at a BMI classified as overweight, moderate obesity, or severe obesity, the more likely they will still be obese at 35.

Of course, this is not a free pass for children who are currently under- or normal weight: The researchers point out that adult-onset obesity does account for about half of adults who are currently obese. Thus, they recommend widespread obesity interventions, as opposed to interventions targeted only at children who are currently obese.

View the abstract or download the complete article from the New England Journal of Medicine.

Authors:

• Zachary J. Ward, M.P.H., Center for Health Decision Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School
• of Public Health
• Michael W. Long, Sc.D., Department of Prevention and Community Health, Milken Institute School of Public Health,  George  Washington  University
• Stephen C. Resch, Ph.D., Center for Health Decision Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
• Catherine M. Giles, M.P.H., Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
• Angie L. Cradock, Sc.D., Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
• Steven L. Gortmaker, Ph.D., Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Ward, Z. J., Long, M. W., Resch, S. C., Giles, C. M., Cradock, A. L., & Gortmaker, S. L. (2017). Simulation of growth trajectories of childhood obesity into adulthood. The New England Journal of Medicine, 377(22), 2145–2153.

A new award co-funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities will explore how sexual orientation/gender identity and socioeconomic status intersect and contribute to health and disease across the life course.

Carolyn T. Halpern, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is co-principal investigator of the 5-year award. Titled, “Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health across the Life Course,” the award is in the amount of more than $3 million. Halpern is the Deputy Director of Add Health.

The grant will be administered through the Carolina Population Center and co-led by Kerith Jane Conron, ScD, MPH, Blachford-Cooper Research Director and Distinguished Scholar at the University of California—Los Angeles School of Law.

As the co-principal investigators described in their award abstract, inequalities in health that disfavor sexual and gender minorities have been documented widely in both adolescence and adulthood. Despite the importance of socioeconomic status to health, however, researchers have limited knowledge about factors that affect these resources and strains in relationship to sexual orientation and gender.

The research conducted under this grant will help fill the knowledge gap by collecting high-quality data that will build on existing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Add Health has followed a national sample of almost 20,000 individuals who were in grades 7-12 in 1994-1995. Four waves of data collection have been completed to date.  Wave V data collection currently is ongoing; participants are now in their 30s and early 40s. The new project will collect, clean, disseminate and analyze new data from a subset of the Add Health cohort comprised of 2,200 sexual and gender minorities and a comparison sample of 1,500 cisgender heterosexuals.

Researchers will survey this subset of Add Health respondents to gather information about formative experiences specific to sexual orientation and gender identity development, and to further enhance existing prospective information about determinants of socioeconomic status.

“We’re very proud of the new contribution we’ll make to Add Health,” Halpern said. “These unique data will provide an unprecedented opportunity for Add Health users to study the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic factors and health in a population-based sample across the life course.”

Findings made possible through these new data, in combination with existing longitudinal information about Add Health sample members, have the potential for critical impact on public health policy and intervention strategies to reduce disparities in disease burden and to improve population health.

From Chair of maternal and child health to co-lead grant investigating sexual/gender identity, socioeconomic status and health, posted by The Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Researchers at the Universities of Warwick, Manchester, and the Witwatersrand used Add Health data to demonstrate that moods likely pass from person to person, while depression does not. This evidence supports the theory of social contagion, which suggests that, to an extent, we take on the moods of the people around us. Depression, on the other hand, is a deeper, lasting mental health condition that doesn’t bend to such influence from others.

Read the story in Forbes – Study: Your Moods Are Contagious, Depression is Not by David DiSalvo, September 29, 2017.

Forbes Excerpt:

“[M]ood does indeed spread through social networks, and the severity of bad moods in groups influences how fast someone in the group can recover. In other words, if you’re hanging around people who are chronically annoyed and frustrated, your ability to get back to a more stable mood is handicapped – even if you originally weren’t annoyed and frustrated yourself.

But even though bad mood contagions are potent, the study didn’t find evidence that people pass on depression, which further supports the argument that mood and depression aren’t synonymous. You can certainly make others feel more depressed than they were (i.e. more sad, frustrated, angry, etc.), but that’s significantly different than passing on depression.”

Scholarly Source: Eyre, R. W., House, T., Hill, E. M., Griffiths, F. E. (2017). Spreading of components of mood in adolescent social networks. Royal Society Open Science, 4, 170336.