DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34598
title: Flint [Michigan] Adolescent Study (FAS): A Longitudinal Study of School Dropout and Substance Use, 1994-1997
title: Archival Version

description: The Flint Adolescent Study (FAS) interviewed 850 ninth graders in the four public high schools of Flint, MI. The study was conducted in collaboration with the Projects for Urban and Regional Affairs and Flint Community Schools. The goal of the study was to explore the protective factors associated with school dropout and alcohol and substance use. The study followed the youths for four years beginning in the Fall of 1994. The sample reflected the overall student body in the Flint high schools. In order to study those students most at risk for leaving school before graduation, individuals with grade point averages of 3.0 and below were selected.
Interviews were conducted face-to-face with each student at the school or in a community location for students who were out of school. Each interview took about one hour to complete. At the end of the interview students were asked to complete the last section of the questionnaire by themselves which contains questions about their drug use and sexual behavior.
Information obtained from the youths includes: participation in church, school, and community organizations; social support and influence of family and friends; self esteem and psychological well being; delinquent and violent behaviors; alcohol and substance use; sex behavior and child bearing; school attitudes and performance; and family structure and relationships. The Youths were asked to complete a brief questionnaire at the end of the interview about their alcohol and substance use, and sexual behavior. In years 3 and 4 questions also asked about driving behavior, attachment style, stress, mentoring, and racial identity. Data was also collected about parental education and occupation.
description: There are over 660 unique variables across the four waves of data collection. About 23 percent of these variables are repeated on three of the waves, and about 47 percent are asked on all four waves. The number of variables per data file are:

1994: 399
1995: 522
1996: 562
1997: 600
description: There are no weight variables associated with the data files.
description: Response Rates: Over 90 percent of the original students participated in each of the three follow-up years the study was being conducted.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Year 1: 1994
DS2: Year 2: 1995
DS3: Year 3: 1996
DS4: Year 4: 1997
description: Ninth grade students in the four main public high schools in Flint, Michigan who had a grade point average of 3.0 or lower who were African American, Caucasian, or a mix.
description: face-to-face interview; self-enumerated questionnaireDue to limited resources the Principal Investigator made the decision to only sample Black / African American, White / Caucasian, or a mix of those two races for inclusion in the study. In the first wave's questionnaire it instructs the student to end the survey and thanked them for their participation if he or she was of some other race. In wave 1 the number of students marking down they were Black was 80 percent, White 17 percent, and a mix of those two (3 percent).In order to help protect the confidentiality of the respondents some disclosure techniques were utilized by ICPSR. These data adjustments are detailed more thoroughly in the PDF codebooks. Changes included classifying relationship status and categorization of ages of household members, bottom-coding questions asking for the age of when something first occurred, top-coding some variables, and recoding into categories or masking written responses.Section H of the questionnaire allowed each student to list and describe up to five activities in the areas of school, church, and community. The specific written-in responses to these activities and purposes have been suppressed to help protect the confidentiality of the students. At a later time ICPSR may choose to go back and categorize these entries so that the variables are usable once again.The Principal Investigator created several recoded variables in Section I on drug use. This was done to provide a secondary way to view the data. The recodes account for students who marked that they never partook of the substance in question. The recoded variables have these cases marked as "0 times" instead of "Not Applicable" as it is coded on the original variables.ICPSR created a variable crosswalk to show the consistency of questions asked across the four waves. The crosswalk is included with each part's questionnaire file. Please note that almost all of repeated variables were asked in the same way and have the same variable and value labels. However, there are a few variables that do have slight differences in their wording. Please consult each year's codebook and questionnaire when looking at variables across time.