Description

The brv data frame has 399 rows and 11 columns. The data concern the possible effect of marital bereavement on subsequent mortality. They arose from a survey of the physical and mental health of a cohort of 75-year-olds in one large general practice. These data concern mortality up to 1 January, 1990 (although further follow-up has now taken place).

Subjects included all lived with a living spouse when they entered the study. There are three distinct groups of such subjects: (1) those in which both members of the couple were over 75 and therefore included in the cohort, (2) those whose spouse was below 75 (and was not, therefore, part of the main cohort study), and (3) those living in larger households (that is, not just with their spouse).

Format

This data frame contains the following columns:

id

subject identifier, a numeric vector

couple

couple identifier, a numeric vector

dob

date of birth, a date

doe

date of entry into follow-up study, a date

dox

date of exit from follow-up study, a date

dosp

date of death of spouse, a date (if the spouse was still alive at the end of follow-up,this was coded to January 1, 2000)

fail

status at end of follow-up, a numeric vector (0=alive,1=dead)

group

see Description, a numeric vector

disab

disability score, a numeric vector

health

perceived health status score, a numeric vector

sex

a factor with levels Male and Female

Source

Jagger C, and Sutton CJ, Death after Marital Bereavement. Statistics in Medicine, 10:395-404, 1991. (Data supplied by Carol Jagger).

Examples