DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39091.v1
title: Puerto Rican Elder: Health Conditions (PREHCO) Project, 2021-2022
title: Version 1

description: This is the third wave of the PREHCO project (Puerto Rican Elder Health
Conditions study) and was developed between 2021 and 2022 as a collaboration between the University of Alabama in 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. This wave followed the survivors of the 1,299 original participants at the beginning of the fieldwork and aimed 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: one for the
targets with a direct interview (FACTORT_w3, n=617) and another for all the targets,
with a direct interview or through a proxy (FACTORTP_w3, n=811).
description: Response Rates: 73.7%
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 the first wave, 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 third wave of PREHCO was carried out
on the sample of PREHCO survivors from wave 2, and maintains the
characteristics of the original sample.
In the third wave, 958 participants were
interviewed directly or through an informant proxy, of the estimated 1,299
alive at the beginning of the field work.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: English Data
DS2: Respondent Death Status Data
DS3: Spanish Data
description: People 78 or older of Puerto Rico living in households, 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 interviewMore details can be found by visiting the project 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.