DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39091
title: Puerto Rican Elder: Health Conditions (PREHCO) Project, 2021-2024
title: Archival Version

description: These are the third and fourth waves of the PREHCO project (Puerto Rican Elder Health Conditions study) and have been developed between 2021 and 2024 as a collaboration between the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Puerto Rico. The project began as a cross-sectional study of the non-institutionalized population aged 60 years or older in Puerto Rico. These waves followed the survivors of the original participants at the beginning of the fieldwork and aimed to examine the predictors of cognitive decline, disability, and mortality. The fourth wave of this study extends the follow-up of PREHCO to between 21 and 22 years after the initial data collection and aims to examine the predictors of cognitive decline, disability, and mortality. 
PREHCO was designed as a study comparable to the Multicenter Project on
Health and Well-being of Older Adults in Latin America and the Caribbean (SABE)
developed by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in several cities in
Latin America, and with some studies carried out in the United States, mainly
the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). 
For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed that included sections
on health conditions, physical and mental disability, functionality, use of
medicines, health needs and social services, access to and use of health
services, abuse, migration, housing conditions, patterns of help from family,
community and public and government agencies, and others. 
Since its inception, PREHCO has been funded with federal
funds from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Initially it was a project
between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Puerto Rico
from 2000-2009.
description: Two weights are included for Wave 3 of the study (Datasets 1 and 3): one for the
targets with a direct interview (<strong>FACTORT_W3</strong>, n=617) and another for all the targets,
with a direct interview or through a proxy (<strong>FACTORTP_W3</strong>, n=811).
description: Response Rates: 
73.7% (Wave 3)
95.1% (Wave 4)
description: Presence of Common Scales: The Veterans Rand 12 Item Health Survey (VR-12), Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6), Spanish form of Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), Perceived Stress Scale by Dr. Sheldon Cohen, CAGE questionnaire by Dr. John A. Ewing, BECK Anxiety Inventory (partial), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Traumatic Exposure Severity Scale (TESS)
description: For the original sample of PREHCO, a multi-stage, stratified cluster
sampling was used, using the 2000 Population and Housing Census of the United
States Census Bureau as a sampling frame. The sample included five strata and
was representative of the population aged 60 years or older in Puerto Rico and
of each of those strata.
The longitudinal follow-up of the fourth wave of PREHCO was carried out
on the sample of PREHCO survivors from wave 3, and maintains the
characteristics of the original sample design to guarantee the objectives that
were planned for the study in its initial phase.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: English Wave III Data
DS2: Respondent Death Status Wave III Data
DS3: Spanish Wave III Data
DS4: English Wave IV Data
DS5: Spanish Wave IV Data
description: Waves three and four of this study included people aged 77 or older living in households in Puerto Rico, including those unable to answer by themselves and survivors of the original PREHCO participants from 2002-2003. Smallest Geographic Unit: Municipality
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); cognitive assessment test; face-to-face interviewFor additional information on the Puerto Rican Elder: Health Conditions (PREHCO) Project, please visit the Aging in Puerto Rico: Longitudinal Follow-Up of the PREHCO Study website.Each dataset contains a CASEID variable which may be used for linking/merging. When using PREHCO Wave 1 or 2 data including the spouses as independent records (only targets were included in waves 3 and 4), the variable TYPE must be used in the equation (1=target, 2=spouse) since both respondent types share the CASEID.