The SAGE Well-being of Older People Study (WOPS) is a sub-study conducted in partnership with the Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Unit Uganda Research Unit on AIDS and Africa Centre Demographic Surveillance System.

The study was conducted to provide data on the effects of HIV/AIDS among older people infected or affected by HIV in Uganda and South Africa. The aim of this study was to describe the health status, well being and functional status among older people either infected with HIV themselves, or affected by HIV/AIDS in their families. The impacts of caregiving and ART were also examined.

Baseline data were collected in 2009/10 from the General Population Cohort and Entebbe Cohort of the MRC/UVRI Uganda and the African Centre Demographic Information System surveillance area in South Africa. Face-to-face interviews were used to collect data on persons aged 50+ in five groups:

• Are HIV infected and have been on ART for at least 1 year;
• Are HIV infected and either on ART for less than 3 months or waiting to initiate ART;
• Had an adult child who died of AIDS-related illness;
• Have an adult child living with HIV and on ART;
• Have no child with HIV/AIDS and are not themselves infected with HIV (comparison group).

The South Africa PIs used a team of three interviewers to conduct the interviews, led by a team of scientists (Nyirenda 2012). The Uganda PIs assembled and coordinated quantitative and qualitative survey teams (Scholten 2011). To facilitate the rapport between interviewers and participants for the qualitative portion of the study, all interviewers were local people from the study areas and aged 60-plus. Training materials and technical support was provided to PIs by WHO. Nirmala Naidoo prepared the data sets for analysis.

Sample sizes

The final sample was 952 participants (422 in South Africa and 510 in Uganda). The mean age was 65.8 years in Uganda and 62.4 years in South Africa.

Country-specific adaptations to SAGE-WOPS HIV questionnaires

A comparison group of older people who had no HIV+ child and were not themselves HIV+ was included in Uganda but not South Africa.

Data access

Data sets are in the public domain and available from the online SAGE Data Archive at no cost: to access it, choose “Filter by Topic”; select “Well-Being of Older People Study (WOPS)”, click on country/data of interest, then click on "Microdata request form", and follow the online instructions to obtain data.

 Access the online SAGE-WOPS HIV Data Archive

Survey materials

Data from both sites were collected using validated survey instruments adapted from WHO SAGE. Questionnaires are available on request through sagesurvey@who.int.

Support

The SAGE-WOPS HIV sub-studies are supported by the Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), US National Institutes of Health (NIH). SAGE-WOPS HIV was supported by grant number GHA-G-OO-09-00003 through NIA/NIH. WHO provided salary support for members of the WHO SAGE team.