The second wave of full data collection among participants who are taking part in extensive telephone interviews only has been successfully launched by the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Staff at three of the CLSA’s Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) sites have begun conducting the telephone interviews with participants who are part of the ‘tracking cohort’. The CATI site in Manitoba will begin interviews in January.

There are 21,241 participants from across Canada in the tracking cohort, for whom the first wave of full data collection took place from mid-2011 to mid-2014. Participants were aged 45-85 at the time they were recruited. Most of those participants have also completed the 30-minute maintaining contact questionnaire (MCQ) interviews with additional health-related questions, which were scheduled for approximately 18 months after the initial telephone interview data collection.

For the first follow-up now underway, the health-related questions that were part of MCQ have been moved into this full telephone interview, and therefore there is an option to complete the interview in two parts. The total length of both parts of the full interview will be approximately 90 minutes. Maintaining contact will also be part of the first follow-up process, but will consist of only a few questions to stay in touch and update contact information.

First follow-up data collection for these participants will take approximately three years to complete.

For the 30,097 participants who are part of the ‘comprehensive cohort’, first follow-up has been ongoing since last July. Nearly 4,000 participants have completed their in-home interviews, and about 3,700 of those have also completed the data collection site visit.

The CLSA plans to follow its participants for a total of 20 years, with major data collection scheduled to take place once every three years.