Biosocial Surveys (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction--James W. Vaupel, Kenneth W. Wachter, and Maxine Weinstein
Introduction--James W. Vaupel, Kenneth W. Wachter, and Maxine Weinstein
Pages 1-12
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Unlike biomedical surveys and clinical studies, always rich in biological indicators, these social surveys probe demographic characteristics, economic and health-related behaviors, resources, constraints, and life-course transitions in depth. Consequently, they hold out promise for shining a spotlight on interactions between biological factors and "environment" in its personalized complexity.
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Like the earlier one, this volume was sponsored by the Behavioral and Social Research Division of the National Institute on Aging and put together under the auspices of the Committee on Population of the National Research Council. Cells and Surveys was influential, but not because the book caused social scientists to add biological measures to their surveys.
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. Social scientists can also use the genetic information to better estimate environmental and behavioral effects on health: George Davey Smith and Shah Ebrahim describe an ingenious method to exploit genetic variants to make causal inferences about environmental variables (Chapter 16)
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In such a system, laws of large numbers often operate, and many detailed interactions cancel out. Physicists successfully model complex particle systems with random matrices whose spectra obey simple, discoverable laws.
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are brave or reckless. The more general point is clear: most social science research using biological information does not pertain to genes, and the research that does include genes largely focuses on using this information to better assess nongenetic influences.
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Kaare Christensen and colleagues describe the main research directions and findings of the Danish studies of elderly twins, nonagenarians, and centenarians. Michael Marmot and Andrew Steptoe provide a review of two important English surveys, Whitehall II and ELSA (the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing)
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and Chang et al. note differences between results from the MacArthur study in the United States and the Taiwan biomarker project; these variations have the potential to open a window onto macro-level influences on the links between social experience and health.
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She stresses the role of the environment in shaping the action of genes and the enormous intricacy of the genetic architecture of complex traits, such as longevity or intelligence. George Vogler and Gerald McClearn provide a complementary perspective on the limited opportunities, subtle complexities, and numerous pitfalls in analyzing genetic markers in social science research.
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Stacy Tessler Lindau and Thomas McDade provide an overview of minimally invasive and innovative methods for collecting biological information in population-based research. Some of the strategies they discuss are being implemented.
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Social scientists have only occasionally been able to do so, but Thomas and Frankenberg describe how a clinical trial with iron supplements could be used to study how health influenced workers' productivity and time allocations in Indonesia. Davey Smith and Ebrahim describe an alternative strategy, in which quasi-randomization is produced by use of instrumental variables related to individuals' genetic variants.
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Such an approach is difficult, and most research studies will continue to focus on fragments. Including biological indicators in social surveys will, however, encourage broader integrative thinking and produce deeper understanding of mechanisms and causal linkages.
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