Revisiting human research subjects
Experts renew ties with high schoolers they studied in 1960 to seek clues about Alzheimer’s
Even 58 years later, Rich Morgan can recall some unusual testing that took place involving him and his fellow North Braddock Scott High School students, as well as 400,000 others across the country.
“They were different from other tests we’d taken. They were asking about our attitudes and things like that,” Mr. Morgan, 75, now of Lake Opatcong, N.J., recalled. “I remembert hinking something like, ‘What isit we’re doing here?’”
Here’s what was happening on those two test days in 1960, as the retired science teacher later learned: The North Braddock students of 1960 and a cross-section of others across the nation were being assessed for their backgrounds and aptitudes, with the post-Sputnik aim of better identifying high schoolers who showed promise in technical fields such as engineering and the sciences.
The unprecedented survey into high school students’ lives, interests, personalities and abilities was called Project Talent. It was based in Pittsburgh, where a University of Pittsburgh psychology professor, John C. Flanagan, led it as founder and head of the American Institutes for Research.
By periodically checking how those same students’ lives evolved
during the 1960s and thereafter, Project Talent would go on to produce some of the first significant research findings about the gender pay gap and prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam War combat veterans.
And now, after many decades as part of research history rather than present-day relevance, Project Talent is pursuing new meaning by checking in on some of its teens-turned-septuagenarians. The goal this time is to learn various characteristics and behaviors that over a lifetime influence development of Alzheimer’s and other dementia.
Susan Lapham, Project Talent’s principal investigator and director, said the number and diversity of its original participants and the long span over which their health can be tracked create a rare and valuable opportunity for researchers. The original participants are 72 to 76 years old now, an age group in which the rate of dementia could be about15 percent.
“There have been many studies about Alzheimer’s, but the unique aspect we have is all of these early life adolescent indicators” from the prior testing, she said. “We really hope we can say [after interviewing participants anew about their health and lifestyles] that if youread X number of hours a day, if you exercise, if you stay involved socially, if you have some sort of spirituality ... that if you’re one of the kids of today and you do all those things now, you’ll lessen the risk of getting dementia.”
Project Talent still falls under the American Institutes for Research, which is no longer based in Pittsburgh. In the 1960s, Mr. Flanagan led a staff of some 140 in its Oakland headquarters, with more than 200 others working in additional offices in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Palo Alto, Calif. He eventually relocated to Palo Alto, and the Pittsburgh location closed by 1980. The AIR is now based in Washington.
Ms. Lapham said efforts to make use of the original participants for studies were renewed in the 1980s, but there were difficulties finding funding due to uncertainty about the ability to track down individuals a quarter-century later.
As the nation’s focus on the burgeoning aging population increased within the last decade, AIR officials revived the idea. They used the 50year reunions held in 2010-13 among the original graduating classes — even those from long-closed schools like North Braddock Scott — to reach out and organize an updated list of contact information for participants.
Ms. Lapham said that after it was proved that a majority of participants could be tracked down — other than the 1 out of 4 who are now deceased — the National Institute on Aging approved $11 million in grants for the Project Talent Aging Study, with Alzheimer’s as the primary focus. A separate mortality study exploring causes of death also was approved for $4 million.
For the Aging Study, general information questionnaires were sent in recent weeks to 22,500 of the 400,000 original participants, with the recipients representing a broad cross-section of earlier test performances, socio-economic levels, race, ethnicity and other facets, Ms. Lapham said. Subsequent phone interviews will delve deeper into physicaland mental health.
The new research will be more manageable, while still statistically valid, by using just a subset of the original participants instead of everyone who can be found, Ms. Lapham said. Those who remember taking the 1960 testing but are left out of the new mailings can participate voluntarily in a supplementary survey by calling the Project Talent team at 1-866-770-6077.
“Dr. Flanagan did an amazing job when the kids were in high school, and in the early follow-ups, of making sure the participants felt special,” said Ms. Lapham, who expressed confidence that their pride in earlier participation would help ensure the necessary response now.
About 1,250 high schools nationally were chosen for the 1960 study. Besides North Braddock Scott, others from the local area included Westinghouse, St. Elizabeth, South Hills Catholic, South Vocational, Beaver Falls, Carnegie, Chartiers-Houston, Monaca, Oakmont, Pitcairn and Verona. Ms. Lapham said about 350 of their early ’60s graduates now are part of the follow-up.
Mr. Morgan is not among the subset who have received oneof the new mailings, nor is Joan Brown, a 1961 Oakmont High School graduate who also remembers the testing. “It was based on your general knowledge — not what you hadbeen taught, but what you might excel at,” Ms. Brown, 74, now retired in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., recalled.
But she suggested that Project Talent’s original goals apparently weren’t achieved in her case. She was not part of the pre-college course track in high school, and when she scored highest in her class on the test for “mechanical aptitude,” a teacher scoffed. Instead of going to college or developing any kind of technical career, Ms. Brown became a secretary before a successful career owning pizza shops and real estate in the Pittsburgharea.
“It was a different era back then,” in spite of what Project Talent sought to achieve, she said. “There weren’t many students at all that went to college, let along girls. ... I’m sure I’m not the only child in the United States who ended up not having an education that fulfilled their potential.”