| Birth cohorts |
Participants are enrolled at birth or in early life and are followed prospectively over time to collect information on health outcomes in early life, mid-life, and late life |
Extremely resource intensive and rare, challenges related to changes in measures over time might be relevant |
| Retrospective life histories |
After study enrolment, older adults are asked to recall exposures and health outcomes over the course of their life |
Recall bias can be a problem, no objective measures of exposures or health outcomes available in early life or mid-life |
| Data linkages |
Data linkages allow for early life and mid-life information from health records, work or tax records, financial institutions, schools, or other sources to be integrated into existing studies |
Data might not be available for all participants leading to selection bias, measurement error in available information from records could be an issue |
| Synthetic cohorts33
|
Synthetic cohorts can be created by using statistical methods to predict early and mid-life health outcomes by linking cohorts of older adults to other cohorts that cover earlier age ranges |
Prediction models need to be correctly specified and must include all important confounders and mediators, need to assume cohorts come from the same underlying population |
