The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is the only nationally representative study of adolescent health, which has spawned over 1500 peer-reviewed publications on many issues related to adolescent health and health risk behaviours.
The Add Health survey aims to investigate adolescent physical and mental health, as well as disparate factors that may influence health, such as neighbourhood safety, involvement in violence, social integration, family structure, and romantic relationship history. The unique aspect of Add Health is its focus on social networks as a means of understanding adolescent health. Rather than relying on subjects' reports of peer behaviour, Add Health obtains information directly from some subjects' peers.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic required a deep understanding of sexual risk-taking that social scientists could not provide; however, adolescent sexuality research was controversial. In May 1991, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) approved a five-year national study of adolescent sexual risk-taking, which unleashed a firestorm of controversy. For instance, Senator Jesse Helms contended that the survey constituted "support for homosexuality and sexual decadence" (Boonstra 2001).
This political pressure on the Bush administration was so strong that only months after the initial grant was announced, Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan withdrew the grant on the grounds that the survey would "inadvertently convey a message that would be counterproductive to our efforts to discourage casual sex among teenagers."
The United States Congress's 1993 National Institutes of Health reauthorization banned future research aimed exclusively at adolescent sexual behaviour, but proposed in its stead a more comprehensive study of adolescent health which would examine many health risk-taking behaviours in addition to sexual risks, including violence and the use of tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs.
Add Health is directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris (UNC, Chapel Hill), with fieldwork done by National Opinion Research Center (Waves I and II) and Research Triangle Institute (Waves III and IV). It is funded by the NICHD and 23 other federal agencies and foundations. The study was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, with special assistance from Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle.
Read more about National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent Health: Sampling Procedure, Content of Survey
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