Study title

Many illnesses that lead to death can be influenced by personal lifestyles. ´Unhealthy´ behavior makes successful, active aging difficult. Several waves of surveys are used to close information gaps with regard to a further increase in life expectancy and the growing proportion of older people. Over the past decades, chronic diseases, cardiovascular diseases and malignant neoplasms have become increasingly important causes of death. Recent analyses show that many of these diseases are influenced by personal behaviour, forms of life and environmental conditions and are therefore often ´avoidable´. Unhealthy behaviour also makes successful, active ageing difficult. In order to investigate the current life situation and a change in living conditions with their effects on the previous, current and expected state of health, a survey was carried out in 1998 by I+G Gesundheitsforschung, which was designed as a repeat survey of the National Health Surveys conducted in West Germany in 1984/86 and in East Germany in 1991/92. The main elements of the new questionnaire with regard to the subject matter of the study were the retrospective recording of events that occurred between very different survey dates and a more detailed recording of the family situation. Purely medical questions have been dispensed with.