The Health and Retirement Study (hrs.isr.umich.edu) workshop is intended to give participants an introduction to the study that will enable them to get started using the data for research. HRS is a large-scale longitudinal study with more than 20 years of data on the labor force participation and health transitions that individuals undergo toward the end of their work lives and in the years that follow. This online workshop is intended for users who have little to no experience using HRS data.

Content lectures delivered by HRS co-investigators and content area experts on basic survey content, sample design, weighting, and restricted data files will be available on the course website for viewing ahead of time. During the week of the workshop, each content lecturer will participate in a Zoom meeting with the class to answer questions about their lecture. The majority of each day will be devoted to data labs in which participants will gain experience using the data, with a strong focus on introductory data management and simple data analysis.

The data lab portion assumes some familiarity with Stata. We will provide a temporary site license for Stata and an introductory Stata training module that participants can complete ahead of the workshop to be well prepared. The programming code for the labs will also be provided in SAS.