Life-course, ageing and generations in Norway:the NorLAG study

At the turn of this century, Norway was one of few Western countries without a large-scale longitudinal study on ageing and the life-course. Norwegian ageing studies were in general small and cross-sectional. The empirical foundation provided by large-scale longitudinal studies like those found in countries such as Sweden (SWEOLD, SNACK), Germany (DEAS, BASE), United States (HRS), and the Netherlands (LASA) was lacking. As such, there was limited knowledge on ageing and age-related changes in Norwegian welfare politics. In 2001, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) therefore launched the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation Study (NorLAG), with financial backing from the Research Council of Norway, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and NOVA. The NorLAG study is a multidisciplinary endeavour, primarily located in the intersection between sociology and psychology, but including themes, models, and research instruments from social medicine, clinical psychology, demography, political science and anthropology. It is designed as a longitudinal study for five waves of data collections. So far, two waves have been conducted. The first one was carried out in 2002-03. In the second wave (2007-08), NorLAG was merged with the United Nations-initiated Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). The data collection was therefore labelled LOGG: Life-course, Generation and Gender. Whereas the first wave of NorLAG includes persons 40 years and older, LOGG also includes persons 18 to 39 years. Both the NorLAG and LOGG datasets are now part of ACCESS Life Course, a Research Infrastructure Project that is financed by the National Financing Initiative for Research Infrastructure at the Research Council of Norway (1). This way, data are made easily accessible to the whole research community. The present paper provides an overview of the NorLAG study, including descriptions of the study’s objectives and key research areas, details about the two data collections, and information about how to get hold of the data. In line with the theme of this special issue of the Norwegian Journal of Epidemiology, our main focus will be on the NorLAG study, including persons 40 years and older.