In 2006, researcher Tom Oltmanns asked a simple set of questions: 

1. What is the trajectory of maladaptive personality traits in later life? 

2. In what ways do those traits have an impact on the success with which people navigate important transitions and experiences that commonly occur to older adults? 

And out of these questions, the SPAN study was born! Participants in the SPAN study include a representative sample of over 1,600 adults living in the St. Louis area. A primary goal of the SPAN study is to determine the extent to which personality and personality problems affect the ability to adapt successfully to significant life transitions, such as retirement, the onset of serious health issues, or the loss of a spouse. Baseline assessments began in 2007 and included a semi-structured interview as well as various personality and psychosocial questionnaires. Follow-up assessments of personality and personality problems, social functioning, and marital adjustment, as well as physical and mental health, were, and are still, conducted at regular intervals.

Another central goal of the study is to determine how informant reported assessments of personality can inform us about the health and well-being of our participants. Most knowledge of personality is based on evidence obtained from self-report measures. Unfortunately, there is only a modest correlation between the ways in which people describe themselves and the ways in which others perceive them. Therefore, for each participant, one informant (most often a spouse or other family member) completed the personality questionnaires as an attempt to examine discrepancies between self-report and informant measures. 

The SPAN study was expanded in 2016 to investigate the children and grandchildren of our participants. This extension of the SPAN study is referred to as the St. Louis Personality & Intergenerational Network (SPIN) study. The SPAN study has demonstrated that certain personality, psychosocial, and biological factors affect health in later life. However, we suspect that these factors transcend generational boundaries to influence the health and well-being of subsequent generations. Therefore, we have begun assessing blood relatives of our original group of participants. 

Over the last 17 years, we have been studying how people perceive themselves, how others perceive them, and their beliefs about what others think of them.  In this way, the SPAN study lies directly at the intersection between basic science and clinical research. We have maintained this original purpose, and have since expanded our methods to include looking at physiological measures such as levels of inflammation and stress as found through a blood draw, and other health indicators as found through the microbiome in the gut. 

September 2009