The Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study is a large scale longitudinal cohort study of men and women aged 45 years and older from the general population of New South Wales (NSW), Australia that has been designed to provide reliable evidence to inform policy to support healthy ageing. Further information about the study is available at http://www.45andup.org.au/ .
Details of participant recruitment and data collection have been reported previously [16]. Briefly, individuals aged 45 years and over were randomly selected from the Medicare Australia database (the national universal health insurance scheme), with a two-fold oversampling of rural areas and individuals aged 80 years and over. Participants entered the study by completing a baseline postal questionnaire which was distributed between 1 February 2006 to 31 December 2008 and providing written consent to follow their long term health, through repeat questionnaires and linkage to health records. A total of 267,153 people were recruited to the study over this time; the study had an overall 18 % response rate [16].
Aboriginal status was self-identified in the baseline questionnaire in response to the question: ‘Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Origin? With the following tick box options: 1) No 2) Yes, Aboriginal and 3) Yes, Torres Strait Islander; participants were able to select both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Of the total participants, 1949 people identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin. The study’s baseline questionnaire included a range of questions related to socio-demographic factors, physical and psychological health, behavioural risk factors, social support and past and present medical history. Baseline characteristics of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants have been reported previously [17].
The initial follow-up to the 45 and Up study was undertaken from September-November 2010 where the first ~100,000 participants to join the 45 and Up Study were posted a questionnaire gathering general demographic, health and risk factor data, emphasising Social, Economic and Environmental Factors (as part of “The SEEF Study”). Participants who had requested not be contacted further, had already been contacted for other sub-studies or were deceased (ascertained through linkages to death registries) were not eligible for the follow-up study. A total of 99,927 participants of the 45 and Up study were invited to participate in the follow-up survey.
Ethics, consent and permissions
The 45 and Up and SEEF studies as a whole have received ethical approval from the Human Research Ethics Committees of the University of New South Wales (reference 10186) and the University of Sydney (Ref No. 10-2009/12187), respectively. Ethical approval for the current study has been granted by the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of New South Wales (912/13). All participants of this study provided written informed consent.
Variables
All variables used in this study were derived from the self-reported 45 and Up baseline questionnaire apart from the Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia Plus (ARIA+) score and the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) which were derived for each participant’s postcode of residence at the time of original recruitment as recorded by Medicare Australia. Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) Remoteness areas, based on enhanced measures of remoteness (ARIA+) developed by the National Key Centre for Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems, categorises areas as ‘major cities’, ‘inner regional’, ‘outer regional’, ‘remote’ and ‘very remote.’ The ARIA+ index values are based on road distance from a locality to the closest service centre [18]. IRSD is one of the four indexes in the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) and is primarily based on disadvantage and the variable is derived from census variables such as low income, low educational attainment, unemployment and dwellings without motor vehicles [19]. Socio-demographic information included age, sex, formal educational qualification, marital status, household annual pre-tax income, employment status, ARIA+ score and IRSD. Participants were grouped into quintiles of the IRSD score. Those in quintile 1 were the most disadvantaged and those in quintile 5 were the least disadvantaged [19].
Lifestyle and health risk factor variables included those relating to smoking, alcohol and body mass index (BMI), screen time, hours spent sitting, physical activity and diet. Self-reported weight and height measurements were used to calculate BMI, as weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres (kg/m2). BMI was categorized according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria as underweight (BMI < 18.5 kg/m2), healthy weight (18.5–24.99 kg/m2), overweight (25.0–29.99 kg/m2) and obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) [20]. Participants’ overall level of physical activity was classified according to their responses to questions on the number of weekly sessions (of any duration) of moderate and vigorous physical activity and episodes of walking for longer than 10 min, using items from the validated Active Australia questionnaire [21]. A weighted weekly average number of sessions were calculated for each participant by adding the total number of sessions, with vigorous activity sessions receiving twice the weighting of moderate activity or walking sessions. Physical activity was classified as either ‘sufficient’ (150 min of physical activity in 5 or more sessions a week) or ‘insufficient’ (greater than 1 but less than or equal to 149 min), based on the guidelines from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [21]. Sedentary time was assessed based on ‘screen time’ which was the number of hours spent per day watching television or using the computer and ‘sitting time’ which was the number of hours per day spent sitting. Fruit (including fruit juice) and vegetable (including both raw and cooked vegetables) intake was assessed as servings per day and classified as adequate (≥2 servings of fruit and ≥ 5 servings of vegetables per day) or inadequate (less than these amounts) according to the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines [22].
Self-rated health and quality of life were based on the question, “In general, how would you rate your: Overall health? Quality of life?” followed by options of excellent, very good, good, fair and poor. In order to determine the level of social support provided by close contacts, participants were asked “How many people outside your home, but within 1 h of travel, do you feel you can depend on or you feel very close to?” Based on the responses the social support variable was categorised as follows: none, 1–3 people, 4–6 people and 7 or more people. Psychological distress was measured using the Kessler-10 score [23]; a scale based on 10 items used to measure non-specific psychological distress. Logical imputations were performed for missing values where there is a valid value for a similar but more severe item. For example, when the value “how often did you feel: depressed” is missing, then the value for “how often did you feel: so depressed that nothing could cheer you up” is imputed to the less severe item. The average of all non-missing items is imputed for up to one missing item, and then the final score is calculated; a higher score indicated a higher level of psychological distress. Final scores were only calculated for those participants that had a response for all ten questions after imputation as described above. Kessler-10 scores were classified into 4 groups: low psychological distress (score 10–15), moderate psychological distress (score 16–21), high psychological distress (score 22–29) and very high psychological distress (score 30 or higher) [24].
Past history of and current treatment for certain medical conditions were assessed based on the participant’s response to the questions ‘Has the doctor ever told you that you have…’ and ‘In the last month have you been treated for…”, respectively, followed by a list of conditions that the participant could select. Categories of multiple morbidity were as follows: 0, 1–2 conditions, 3–4 conditions, 5 or more conditions.
Individuals who reported needing assistance with daily tasks because of long-term illness or disability were considered to have a major disability. Functional capacity was assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study Physical Functioning Scale [25]; a lower physical functioning score indicates more severe functional limitation [26]. The questions on the physical functioning scale asked whether participants are limited in their ability to perform vigorous and moderate physical activities and tasks such as: lifting shopping, climbing stairs, walking, bending, kneeling or stooping and bathing or dressing. A score is calculated where there are up to 5 missing items [25]. Functional limitation scores were classified into 5 groups: no limitation (score of 100), minor limitation (score 95–99), mild limitation (score 86–94), moderate limitation (60–84) and severe limitation (score 0–59).
Statistical analyses
For each variable of interest, frequencies and percentages (expressed as a percentage of those invited to the study) were tabulated separately for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants. Generalised linear models with a binomial distribution and a log link function (binomial regression) (proc genmod in SAS, v9.4) adjusted for age and sex was used to determine participation rate ratios (PRR) with participation in the follow-up (yes/no) as the outcome. To examine the mediating role of education and income, models were further adjusted for formal educational qualifications and household annual income level. Analyses were conducted separately in Aboriginal and in non-Aboriginal participants. Effect measure modification of the association between participation and each specific factor by Aboriginal status was assessed using likelihood-ratio tests which compare the age and sex adjusted model with and without the interaction term [27]. All statistical analyses were undertaken using SAS software version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC, USA).