DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34792
title: Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC), 2009-2010
title: Archival Version

description: Since 1982, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe has sponsored a cross-national, school-based study of health-related attitudes and behaviors of young people. These studies, generally known as Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC), are based on independent national surveys of school-aged children in more than 40 participating countries. The HBSC studies were conducted every four years since the 1985-1986 school year. The data available here are from the results of the United States survey conducted during the 2009-2010 school year. The files contain data on 12,642 students from 314 participating schools. Of the 314 participating schools a school administrator questionnaire was completed by 283 of them. The study results can be used as stand-alone data, or to compare with the other countries involved in the international HBSC.
The HBSC study has two main objectives. The first objective is to monitor health-risk behaviors and attitudes in youth over time to provide background data and to identify targets for health promotion initiatives. The second objective is to provide researchers with relevant information in order to understand and explain the development of health attitudes and behaviors through early adolescence.
The study contains questions dealing with many types of drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other substances. Other topics include questions about family composition, the student's physical health, and other health behaviors and attitudes. Some of these topics include eating habits, dieting, physical activity, body image, health problems, and bullying. A school administrator also completed a survey concerning the school's programs and policies that affect students' health and the content of various health courses.
description: For producing population-based estimates of means, totals, proportions, and ratios, each responding student in the sample was assigned a sampling weight. This weight combines a base sampling weight and adjustments for nonresponse at various stages. The base sampling weight assigned to a student (STU_WT) is the inverse of the probability of selection of the student. The probability of selecting a student is the product of the probability of selecting the PSU in which the school to which the student belongs is selected, the probability of selecting the school, and the probability of selecting the class of the student. Weights for each school and district are also present on the file.
description: Response Rates: A total of 475 schools were eligible for participation in the study. Of those 475 schools, 314 participated in the study. There were 31 schools that did not complete the administrator questionnaire.
From the 314 participating schools a total of 14,627 were found eligible to participate. Initially 2 percent of the students refused to consent to the survey. On the day the survey was administered a total of 675 students were absent. However, 301 of them completed the survey within a few days after the original administration date. Of the 98 percent of the students who consented to the survey just over 90 percent participated and completed the questionnaire.
description: The sample was a nationally representative sample, collected through a three-stage stratified design, with census divisions and grades as strata, and school districts (or a group of school districts) as primary sampling units (PSUs). African American and Hispanic students were oversampled to obtain better estimates for these groups.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Student Survey
DS2: School Administrator Survey
description: The universe consisted of public, Catholic, and other private school students in grades 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 or their equivalent in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
description: on-site questionnaireData were collected by The CDM Group, Inc., Bethesda, MD. Data were prepared for release by the Health Behavior Branch of the <em>Eunice Kennedy Shriver</em> National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.To protect the anonymity of respondents, all variables that could be used to identify individuals have been collapsed or recoded in the public use files. These modifications should not affect analytic uses of the public use files.The school administrator survey has been split out as a second part for this wave of data collection instead of being appended to the student data. Users may wish to merge the two datasets together to perform additional analyses combining the administrator survey with the student survey. This can be done using the variable SCHL_ID.The Principal Investigator for this wave of data collection, Ronald Iannotti, has since moved on to the University of Massachusetts, Boston.