DOI: 10.3886/icpsr06716.v2
title: Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 1995
title: Version 2

description: This is the 21st annual survey in this series that explores
 changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of
 contemporary American youth. Two general types of tasks may be
 distinguished. The first is to provide a systematic and accurate
 description of the youth population of interest in a given year, and
 to quantify the direction and rate of change occurring over time. The
 second task, more analytic than descriptive, involves the explanation
 of the relationships and trends observed. Each year, a large,
 nationally representative sample of high school seniors in the United
 States is asked to respond to approximately 100 drug-use and
 demographic questions as well as to an average of 200 additional
 questions on a variety of subjects, including attitudes toward
 government, social institutions, race relations, changing roles for
 women, educational aspirations, occupational aims, and marital and
 family plans. The students are randomly assigned one of six
 questionnaires, each with a different subset of topical questions but
 all containing a set of "core" questions on demographics and drug
use. There are about 1,400 variables across the questionnaires.
description: Each of the seven parts contains a weight variable, V5. They
 were originally varied by school but were modified to protect
 respondent confidentiality. Users should use the weight variable for
 all analyses, the results of which will differ slightly from published
data tables that used original data.
description: Response Rates: The participation rate among schools has been
 between 66 and 80 percent since the inception of the study. The
overall student response rate for 1995 was 84 percent.
description: Multistage area probability sample design involving three
 selection stages: (1) geographic areas or primary sampling units
 (PSUs), (2) schools (or linked groups of schools) within PSUs, and (3)
 students within sampled schools. Of the 80 PSUs, 8 were selected with
 certainty and 72 were selected with probability proportionate to size
 based on the size of the senior class. In schools with more than 400
 seniors, a random sample of seniors or classes was drawn. In schools
 with less than 400 seniors, all seniors were asked to participate.
 Each school was asked to participate for two years so that each year
 one-half of the sample is replaced. Schools refusing participation
 were replaced with similar schools in terms of geographic location,
 size, and type of school (e.g., public, private/Catholic,
 private/non-Catholic). The total sample was divided into six
 subsamples consisting of an average of 2,700 respondents, and each
 subsample was administered a different form of the questionnaire,
 although all respondents answered the "core" drug and demographic
questions.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Core Data
DS2: Form 1 Data
DS3: Form 2 Data
DS4: Form 3 Data
DS5: Form 4 Data
DS6: Form 5 Data
DS7: Form 6 Data
description: High school seniors in the contiguous United States.
description: self-administered questionnaires(1) Percentage distributions provided in the codebook
 were generated using full weights, which are not available on the
 public use files. Therefore, these results cannot be replicated using
 the public use files. The differences between results produced using
 the full weights and those produced using the sampling weights
 available on the public use files are estimated to be below 1
 percent. (2) To protect the confidentiality of respondents, all
 variables that could be used to identify individuals have been
 collapsed or recoded on the public use files. These modifications
 should not affect analytic uses of the public use files. (3) Users are
 advised that there are seven parts to this collection: one containing
 the "key" or core questions for all six questionnaires and a separate
 part for each of the six different questionnaire forms. The core file
 consists of all respondents for all six questionnaires, however, only
 those variables that appear on all six questionnaires and demographic
 variables are found in this file. The core file consists primarily of
 drug use data and demographic variables. The collection is documented
 by machine-readable codebooks with a separate codebook for each
 part. Users are further advised to consult the appropriate MONITORING
 THE FUTURE: QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES FROM THE NATION'S HIGH SCHOOL
 SENIORS annual volume, available from the Monitoring the Future staff,
for more information about the collection.MTF does not release detailed geography codes in its public use files because of the disclosure risk it would cause. The MTF sample is drawn to generate representative samples of the four Census Bureau regions of the country (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West), but it does not generate representative samples of smaller geographic areas such as states, counties, or cities. For additional information about data that is withheld from the public use files please contact MTF directly at mtfinformation@umich.edu.