Country: United States

Study Design: Observational cohort with repeated measurements over time

Participant age range:​ 

• Early adulthood or midlife

• Aging adults

Number of participants at baseline: 6,814 adults aged 45-84

Year of initial enrollment: 2000

Number of data collection waves: 6 primary, > 20 secondary; data collection ongoing

Measures of well-being:

• Optimism

• Social support / integration / cohesion

Quantity of well-being measures (e.g., number of constructs, number of times of well-being was assessed: Low

Quality of well-being measures (e.g., were measures reliable and valid in the study population): High

Measures of physical health: ​

• Self-rated / questionnaire-based health

• Self-report medical history or medication use

• Measured anthropometrics, e.g., weight

• Biomarkers

• Genetics

• Adjudicated health outcomes

Access information:

This dataset is available to all researchers.

Researchers are required to submit an application to access this data. No fees are required to access this dataset.

Notable Citation: Hernandez R, Kershaw K, Siddique J, Boehm J, Kubzansky L, Diez-Roux A, Ning H, & Lloyd-Jones D. (2015). Optimism and cardiovascular health: multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis (MESA). Health behavior and policy review, 2(1), 62-73.