Frequently Asked Questions

If you are a recipient of a CLSA Data Access Trainee Waiver, congratulations! You join a cohort of over 250 trainees who have taken advantage of the CLSA’s valuable resources to further the field of aging research. There are several expectations and privileges involved.

1. The CLSA dataset requested must be for the sole use of the trainee project, i.e., the graduate student’s thesis research or the postdoctoral or clinical fellow’s research project.
2. You are encouraged to include this award in your CV. We recommend using the following language: “CLSA Data Access Trainee Fee Waiver [insert year], monetary equivalent CAN $4,000.”
3. Trainees must acknowledge receipt of a CLSA Data Access Trainee Fee Waiver in all resulting publications as follows, “[Name of trainee] was the recipient of a CLSA Data Access Trainee Fee Waiver.”

Yes, please review Appendix 1 of the CLSA Publication and Promotion Policy for CLSA Data Users.

Yes, in keeping with standard guidelines for de-identification and aggregation of data, all cell sizes with a numerical value less than 6 must be suppressed prior to sharing results outside of the research team. This includes any results represented as counts, rates, percentages, or any other form, including tables, maps, and graphs, that are based upon numerators or underlying data points representing less than 6. For more information, please review the CLSA Publication and Promotion Policy for CLSA Data Users.

Log into Magnolia and access the relevant application. Navigate to the tab labelled “Manuscripts” (note: not available while an amendment is in progress). Add the document here and complete the form that follows. The manuscript will now appear in your Manuscript List when you log in to Magnolia.

Graduate students (Masters or PhD) who wish to obtain the CLSA data for the sole purpose of their thesis, and postdoctoral or clinical fellows (limit 1 waiver per fellowship) who wish to obtain the CLSA data for the sole purpose of their postdoctoral or clinical fellowship project, who are enrolled at Canadian institutions for their graduate degree, postdoc, or clinical fellowship, can apply for a fee waiver. This fee waiver only applies to alphanumeric data. Any additional data requested, such as images and raw data, have associated fees. The trainee fee waiver cannot be applied to CIHR catalyst grant applications. Canadian trainees working outside Canada but funded through a Canadian source are also eligible for a fee waiver. The request for a fee waiver must be checked in Part 1 of the CLSA Data and Biospecimen Access Request Application in Magnolia.

Once you submit your CLSA Data and Biospecimen Request Application, you can track the progress of your application through Magnolia, the online application system. Once you have begun the application process, it is your responsibility to check your email (including your folders for junk, spam, etc.) for notifications from Magnolia. You may be contacted by the Data Access Team, if additional information is required.

You will be notified about the approval status of your application approximately three months after the submission deadline. If your application is approved, a CLSA Access Agreement must be negotiated and signed between McMaster University and your institution. This part of the process can take a variable length of time (up to an additional three (3) months) and is not under the control of the CLSA. You will also need to provide evidence of ethics approval for your project, if you had not done so within your initial application.

Once all parties have signed the CLSA Access Agreement, an invoice for the data access fees will be issued by McMaster Billing. After the payment has been received by McMaster University and proof of ethics approval has been received by the CLSA, your data will be released within 10 working days. Please be aware that these steps may affect the length of time that it takes for the data to be released to you. Please note that the release of additional data (images and raw data) will require more time (one to three months, depending on the request). When planning for your project, you must include in your timeframe at least six (6) months from the application submission deadline to the time you receive your dataset.

Yes. Please note that ethics approval is not required at the time of the application to use CLSA data, but no data or biospecimens will be released until proof of ethics approval has been received by the CLSA. Should your institution not require a full ethical review for the use of de-identified data, please provide a letter from your Institutional Review Board to this effect. Ethics approval must be obtained only from the primary applicant’s institution, not from all of the institutions of the members of the project team.

The CLSA DataPreview Portal has been designed to help researchers browse available variables in the CLSA dataset and find basic frequencies. Should you need additional information not available through the DataPreview Portal to determine the feasibility of your proposal, please contact us at access@clsa-elcv.ca. We can provide simple cross-tabulations (of two or three variables) from cross-sectional data. While we do our utmost to respond to data queries to help potential users ensure that their proposal is feasible, please note that we are not resourced to provide statistics on change across time-points or more in-depth statistical support.

We permanently destroy the link between your personal identifying information (your name, address, phone number) and the information, or data, collected by the CLSA. Only your postal code will remain as part of the study data, to allow us to understand the geographical distribution of CLSA participants at the time of data collection. No one will be able to connect you to the data. We keep a limited amount of identifying information linked to a new ID number, so that we have a record of your participation and that you chose to withdraw.

In order to determine how people age over time, your ongoing involvement in the CLSA is critical. We recognize that as people age, they face situations that have the potential to affect their participation. For that reason, we offer flexible participation, meaning that we provide you with options that accommodate your personal circumstances.

Your participation is very important to us. The CLSA cannot replace participants who joined the study at the start. Choosing not to take part will impact the scientific results. Less information collected by the CLSA over time influences the quality of data available for researchers and decision-makers who develop the health- and social-care policies that affect everyone.

At each interview, you will be asked questions about your health and well-being, including physical, social and emotional functioning, lifestyle and behaviours, as well as the onset of health conditions and diseases. Most of the questions you answer will be repeated across follow-ups. This allows researchers to assess how the health and well-being of participants change over time. Additional questions or tests are introduced in each follow-up to ensure the CLSA is gathering the most comprehensive data. For example, new data collection measures introduced in Follow-up 3 may include mobility trackers, sleep trackers, brain MRIs, stool collection, and additional memory tests for participants who visit Data Collection Sites. In addition, new or expanded questionnaires have been added on quality of life, sleep, nutrition, healthcare use, sexual health and family history of disease for all CLSA participants.

Participants are asked to provide information for the core study approximately every three years. This will be a telephone interview or an in-home interview and visit a CLSA Data Collection Site, depending on which part of the study you are in. You will also be invited to take part in short web survey following your main interview.

We will maintain contact with you by various means (e.g., email, letters or phone calls) to ensure that we have up-to-date contact information for you. You can also update your contact details on our website.

The CLSA occasionally provides opportunities for participants to take part in data collection outside of the main interview every three years (such as the COVID-19 questionnaires, or COVID-19 Antibody Study). These additional points of data collection are optional, and do not affect taking part in the follow-ups every three years.

The CLSA is designed as a research platform to address a wide range of research questions related to aging and the factors influencing health outcomes in older adults. Researchers must apply and be approved to access the CLSA data. They must demonstrate that their proposed research aligns with the guiding principles of CLSA data access, including protecting the rights, privacy and consent of participants, safeguarding the confidentiality and security of the data, and using the CLSA research platform optimally for research that benefits all Canadians.

For example, researchers may study:

• What are the factors that affect how adults age?
• Why do some people stay healthy as they get older and other people develop health problems?
• What changing life circumstances do people face as they get older and how do they handle them?

A description of all the projects using study data is available under Approved Projects.

Key results from projects that use CLSA data are also highlighted under News and in participant newsletters.

You will not get any direct personal benefit from taking part.

You are participating in a study that will provide improved knowledge of the aging process that will inform the development of health policies and programs that benefit you and society as a whole.

It is also possible that, someday, researchers using data and samples collected by the CLSA will lead to new opportunities for interventions and tests that could help in the management of disease or early detection of disease.