Home Interviews & Data Collection Site Visits

People age 45 to 85 years are randomly selected to receive an information package or a telephone call inviting them to participate in the study.

Once you’ve given your consent for us to contact you, we will be calling to answer any additional questions you may have and to find out if you want to participate in the study.

If you choose to take part, we’ll then book a convenient time for one of our trained CLSA interviewers to visit your home.

Here's what participation involves:

  • A CLSA interviewer will visit your home and review the consent form with you and you will both keep a signed copy.  You will then participate in an in-home interview, where you will be asked to share information about your personal background, health history and lifestyle. It is preferred that no one helps with the interview. A separate room or private space is recommended. The home interview should take approximately 70 minutes and will occur at three-year intervals.
  • Visit a CLSA Data Collection Site to have physical measures taken, including blood pressure, height and weight measurements, a bone density measurement, vision and hearing tests, as well as strength and balance tests.  This visit should take approximately 2 1/2 hours and will occur at three-year intervals.
  • A CLSA interviewer will call you mid-way between each three-year data collection site visit to maintain contact and ask you a few more questions about your health and well-being. This call will last approximately 35 minutes.

You will also be given the following two options:

  • Provide blood and urine samples that will be analyzed to learn about aspects of biology and the genetics of aging, health and disease. 
  • Provide the CLSA with your provincial health card number to allow researchers to link the information you provide to health care or other databases held by public institutions (for example, each provincial Ministry of Health keeps databases about your visits to doctors, hospital admissions, medication prescriptions or mortality records).

By agreeing to these options, you will help researchers to better understand the health of an aging population.  You may still participate in the study even if you decline to provide your provincial health card information or do not wish to provide blood and urine samples.

Your participation is voluntary and you can withdraw from the study at any time.

The study information package is available here.