DEXSAGE

DEXSAGE collected unique data using experience sampling method. Older adults provided records of their daily activities for 9 consecutive days including what, where and with whom they were doing. The background variables included sociodemographic characteristics, information on self-reported health, and a short version of Nottingham Health Profile. All datasets are compatible and can be merged together using unique identifiers. The data is made available on Zenodo.org for registered researchers. 

One of the main objectives of the project was to collect a unique dataset recording everyday experiences of older adults – including their objective and subjective characteristics. The dataset comprises of nearly 3000 activities including 1809 randomly sampled activities, 400 activities reported in the end-of-the-day reports as the key activity of the given day, and 600 activities reported in the end-of-the-day reports as the best or the worst activity of the day. The data was collected between January and April 2020 on a sample of 200 non-institutionalized older adults aged 65 and above living in Poland.

The data collected within the study comprises of the following datasets:

1. Individual-level data collected using standard survey questionnaire
2. Activity-level data collected using experience sampling method and featuring randomly-sampled activity episodes
3. Activity level data collected in the end-of-the-day reports and featuring the best or worst activity of the given day
4. Activity-level data collected in the end-of-the-day reports and featuring the main activity of the given day

The structure of the data differs by the type of information collected. In the case of questionnaire 1 (collecting background information) the unit of observation is an individual and the number of rows equals the number of respondents in the study. In the case of the three datasets collecting information on activities, the unit of observation is an episode of an activity and the data is coded in stacked long format, that is each row represents a separate activity. The number of rows per respondents depends on the number of activities they reported.

All datasets are fully anonymized. They can be merged using a combination of the following identifiers:

Person ID + day ID

In order to reconstruct the chronological sequence of events (activity-level data) please append the files and sort them by the following variables:

Person ID+ day ID+ hr + mins

Information on the sampling frame is available in the study documentation uploaded on Zenodo.org together with the datasets. All datasets are provided in STATA 16 format. Value labels for all variables are provided in English. Missing values were not imputed. The verbatim answers to the question about main activity are available by request.

The data can be used to analyse momentary emotions that accompany a variety of daily events. ESM is excellent at capturing emotional states and how they fluctuate across the day. It also removed memory bias, which is important, in particular in the case of older respondents. Together with the information on everyday experiences the interviewers also asked about the particular meaningful activities for older adults. This allowed for constructing a complex dataset that permits comparisons between randomly sampled and particularly meaningful events of daily life. When using the data for your research please cite the source as given below:

Ewa Jarosz. (2020). DEXSAGE Daily Experiences of Successful Ageing (Version v1) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4017865

Links

https://zenodo.org/record/4017865#.YRFqno4zaM8

Keywords

Experience sampling method, older adults, lifestyle, experiences