MARS: Study Overview

https://swrc.um.edu.my/research/mars/

MARS is a longitudinal study of people aged 40 and older, living in private households in Malaysia. Its main goal is to provide a data resource on aging and retirement for research and policy-making that is comparable to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), and the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR). The survey elicits information about demographics, family support, health, healthcare utilization, cognition, employment, income and consumption, housing, and assets.

Cohort Profile: Mansor, N., Awang, H., & Ab Rashid, N. F. (2019). Malaysia ageing and retirement survey. In D. Gu & M. E. Dupre (eds.), Encyclopedia of gerontology and population aging. Springer, Cham.

The MARS sample is a nationally representative sample of the population aged 40 years and older, living in private households in Malaysia. The initial sample was recruited in 2018/19 using a stratified, multistage sampling of households from the National Household Sampling Frame from the 2010 Population Census.

Age Eligibility	Age 40 and older
People Interviewed per Household	Up to three oldest eligible residents of household
Spouse Inclusion	None
Representativeness	Nationally representative
Institutional Representation	Respondents followed into institutions
Oversampling	None

The MARS core interview was carried out through face-to-face interviews using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in 2018/19.

In addition to the core interview, MARS also collects a number of other types of data.

Health Assessment	Conducted at Waves 1 among all respondents.

The MARS Wave 1 sample respondents included 3,324 selected households containing 6,672 eligible individuals. The MARS sample has not been refreshed.

MARS does not include any data linkages.

Public access MARS data are available by request from the Social Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Malaya. Data are anonymized and require the submission of a formal request with a brief study proposal to the Social Wellbeing Research Centre.

Core interview Health assessment	Available via request from: Social Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Malaya

The Gateway to Global Aging Data has created a user-friendly dataset based on MARS data designed to allow researchers to conduct cross-wave and cross-study analysis.

Harmonized MARS	A dataset of research-ready variables derived from the core interview and health assessment of Wave 1.	Coming soon

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MARS: Study Overview