DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02751.v1
title: Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 1998
title: Version 1

description: This is the 24th annual survey in this series that explores
 changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of
 contemporary American youth. Students are randomly assigned to
 complete 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. Drugs covered by this survey include tobacco, alcohol,
 marijuana, hashish, LSD, hallucinogens, amphetamines (stimulants),
 Ritalin (methylphenidate), quaaludes, barbiturates (tranquilizers),
 cocaine, crack, and heroin. Other items include attitudes toward
 religion, parental influences, changing roles for women, educational
 aspirations, self-esteem, exposure to drug education, and
violence and crime -- both in and out of school.
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. The participation rate among schools has been between 66
 and 80 percent since the inception of the study. The overall student
response rate for 1998 was 82 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: High school seniors in the contiguous United States.
description: self-enumerated questionnaire(1) To protect the anonymity 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. (2) Variables
 omitted from the Western region questionnaires are noted in each
 codebook. (3) Users are advised that there are seven parts to the
 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. (4) 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.