DOI: 10.3886/icpsr06716.v1
title: Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 1995
title: Version 1

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: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created online analysis version with question text.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
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: 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: Monitoring the Future (MTF) Series
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.
description: High school seniors in the contiguous United States.
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.