The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72) is a research study started by the National Center for Education Statistics and currently funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The current 2025 NLS-72 study is being conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago (www.norc.org) with support provided by the NIA (https://www.nia.nih.gov) under a grant to Chandra Muller, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. It is a scientific study that does not seek to promote a particular set of policies or viewpoints. The project investigates issues related to education, employment, and health.

NLS-72 was sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through 1986. NCES continues to endorse the NLS-72 study. For more NLS-72 information from NCES, see the following website: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nls72/. The sixth follow-up of the NLS-72 study is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging.

The sixth follow-up of the NLS-72 study is directed by Chandra Muller (The University of Texas at Austin), John Robert Warren (University of Minnesota), Eric Grodsky (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Jennifer Manly and Adam Brickman (Columbia University). The study is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, a not-for-profit social science research organization. Since 1941, NORC has served the public interest and improved lives through objective social science research that supports informed decision making. 

You might also remember NORC as the National Opinion Research Center! For more information about NORC, see www.norc.org.

You were scientifically selected in 1972, so the NLS-72 study would accurately represent our nation's high school seniors at that time. Around 23,000 students from over 1,000 different high schools across the country were asked to participate in NLS-72 in 1972 and about 91 percent of you have been re-interviewed periodically since that time.

You provided your contact information last time you participated in the study. Since this is a follow-up study, we hold on to the contact information that you gave us in an effort to keep in touch with you in the future. To reach everyone, if you have changed addresses since the last follow-up, NORC uses publicly available sources to obtain contacting information.

The information you provide as part of this study will help researchers learn about how education and experiences in early adulthood affect people’s health and wellbeing later in life. By participating in this study, you help researchers and policymakers understand more about the perspectives of and issues facing your generation.

There are several benefits to you and your community for participating in this study. The information you provide will benefit society by increasing our knowledge about how education and adult life experiences influence people’s health and wellbeing as they grow older.

You will also receive the results of the health measures that you take part in, such as blood pressure, waist and hip circumference, and mobility measurements. These health measures typically require a paid visit to a doctor or other healthcare provider’s office. If you choose to participate in the home health visit and donate a small amount of blood, you will also receive lab results that will include a complete blood count and cholesterol levels.

You will also receive a monetary token of appreciation for your time participating in the interview. If you participate in a separate home health visit, you’ll receive an additional monetary token of appreciation.

The risk to you of participating in this study is minimal and all of your information will be kept confidential.

The survey answers you provide will be used by researchers to improve education and health policies and services in the United States. In addition to questions about employment, you’ll be asked questions related to how you think and how well you remember things.

You’ll also be asked to participate in an exciting and important new part of this NLS-72 follow-up round. We want to learn how people’s biology and things that happen to them in their lives impact their health and wellbeing as they grow older. To do that, during the in-home interview, we will collect health measures like height, weight, and blood pressure. You can decide which measures you’re comfortable completing at the time of the visit.

Whether participating in-home or on the phone, you’ll then be asked if you’re interested in completing some additional health measures, including providing a blood sample during a separate in-home visit. Your participation will help us learn how to keep you, your friends, and your family enjoying long, healthy, and happy lives. Your health data would be kept private and used only for research, just like the survey data.

There are a few different ways that you can confirm you’re eligible for the study. 

• Click on the link below and complete some brief screening questions. Once you submit this form, a member of our study team will reach out to you to let you know if you are eligible for the study and schedule your interview. 

Confirm Your Eligibility Here 

• You can also confirm your eligibility over the phone with a member of our study team by calling our project’s toll-free number at 1-877-271-9503. 

There are a few different ways that you can participate in this year’s NLS-72 Study.

The interview will include questions that will help us understand how people think and how well they remember things. We are interested in exploring how these particular things are related to social relationships and health. We will ask you about things like your employment situation and past experiences as well as conduct a set of thinking and memory exercises. If you are selected for an in-home interview, we will ask you to complete some physical measures like height, weight, and blood pressure. You will receive a monetary token of our appreciation for your time.

After you complete the interview, you will also be asked if you’d like to participate in a home health visit where a trained health worker will ask for some additional information, request your permission to draw a small amount of your blood, and ask to complete some additional physical measures, such as blood pressure. If you participate in this separate health visit, you’ll receive an additional monetary token to thank you for the additional time you share with us.

Depending on where you live, you might also be eligible to participate in an MRI scan as part of the NLS-72 study. See the Q&A below under the heading, MRI FAQs, to learn more.

You may choose not to answer any specific question or not participate in any of the health measures for any reason, and you may stop participating at any point in time. The interview and any follow-up visit in which you choose to participate will be scheduled at a convenient time of your choosing. Your participation will help us learn how to keep you, your friends, and your family enjoying long, healthy, and happy lives.

The in-home interview takes approximately three hours to complete. The phone interview takes about one hour to complete. If you agree to participate in the follow up health visit, it may take up to 60 additional minutes on a future date. If you participate in the optional MRI study, the scan will take approximately one hour to complete, although additional time will be required for travel to the site and pre-scan preparation.

Your participation in the study is voluntary. You always have the choice not to answer any specific question or not to participate in any of the health measures for any reason, and you may stop participating at any point in time. However, your participation matters and makes the study results more complete and accurate. We hope that you will choose to participate.

A trained interviewer will complete your interview with you and only trained project personnel will have access to your data, which will all be stored on secure, protected computers. All the information that you provide will be de-identified—that means you will be assigned a secure identification number so that none of your responses are linked to your identifying information. If you have other questions about how we maintain the privacy of your data, visit the Privacy page.

If you agree to donate blood, your blood samples would be stored securely for future analyses at the University of Minnesota. Results from analyses using your blood will be submitted to a secure data storage site approved by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), such as the NIA Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease Data Storage Site.

If you live near an MRI site and agree to a scan, the MRI images will contain no information that could identify you. They will also be ‘defaced’, meaning that we will blur the part of the image that contains pictures of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. All the images will be stored securely at the Laboratory of NeuroImaging (LONI) at the University of Southern California.

Your privacy and the confidentiality of your information are extremely important to us. We work hard to protect the privacy of people who participate in our study. Information we get from you would be assigned a secure identification number. Your name, address, phone number, and email address would remain confidential and would never appear in any report or presentation about this study.

All researchers who want to use data from this study must agree to strict rules and procedures that are designed to protect your information. The data shared with researchers will not contain information that identifies you.

• Call us, toll free, at 1-877-271-9503
• Email us at nls72@norc.org
• Visit us at www.nls-72.norc.org
• If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, or wish to obtain information, ask questions, or discuss any concerns about this study with someone other than the researcher(s), please contact:

            The NORC Institutional Review Board (IRB), toll-free, at 1-866-309-0542

            Please refer to protocol STUDY 21-07-389. IRB Date Approved: 01/19/2023

You will be asked to have a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan that takes pictures of your brain. For this exam, you will lie down on a flat bed, which will then be placed in a tunnel that is open at each end. You will need to lie still for about 50 minutes. As the machine takes detailed pictures of your brain, you will hear loud banging noises. You can talk to the study staff during the procedure and can stop the scan at any point.

Magnetic resonance imaging does not use any harmful radiation so there is no risk of exposure during the procedure. However, due to the strong magnet, an MRI is not safe to use with certain metallic implants and other conditions.

To make sure you can safely complete this scan, the study team at the MRI Center will ask you about things such as implanted pacemakers, aneurysm clips, cochlear implants, dentures, surgical plates, screws, and tattoos. 

The recommendation of physicians may change based on other recent health events in your life. As such, it is important to go through the implant screening process for each new MRI location. You also may have been scanned by weaker magnets in the past because a higher-strength magnet may be deemed unsafe for your implant.

An MRI scan allows us to take a very close look at the structures of your brain. Changes in these structures can give us information about your brain health and can help us understand how certain things affect our thinking abilities over time. 

Yes, you can request a compact disc with your images. Some sites may also be able to send a copy of your images to your doctor. They will ask you to sign a release form prior to sharing any personal health information.

We cannot prescribe any medication as part of the study, but if you normally take medication or would like to speak to your physician about the possibility of taking medication before the MRI scan, you should feel free to do so. Please let the staff at the MRI Center know if you plan to take any medications. 

Only de-identified data (i.e., files that do not have any identifying information, like name or date of birth) will be made available for research use. There will not be any personally identifiable information saved on the MRI scan files. Only the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will have access to any link between your MRI and your survey data. Your scan will also be ‘defaced’, which means that the images are further anonymized by blurring the part of the MRI scan that contains pictures of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.