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Description & Citation--Study No. 2833

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:2833
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02833
 
Title:National Survey of Adolescents in the United States, 1995
 
Principal Investigator(s):Dean G. Kilpatrick, Medical University of South Carolina, National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center
 
  Benjamin E. Saunders, Medical University of South Carolina, National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center
 
Funding Agency:United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice.
 
Grant Number:93-IJ-CX-0023
 
Bibliographic Citation:Kilpatrick, Dean G., and Benjamin E. Saunders. NATIONAL SURVEY OF ADOLESCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1995 [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Charlestown, SC: Medical University of South Carolina [producer], 1999. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2000. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02833
 

Scope of Study

Summary:The goal of this study was to test specific hypotheses illustrating the relationships among serious victimization experiences, the mental health effects of victimization, substance abuse/use, and delinquent behavior in adolescents. The study assessed familial and nonfamilial types of violence. It was designed as a telephone survey of American youth aged 12-17 living in United States households and residing with a parent or guardian. One parent or guardian in each household was interviewed briefly to establish rapport, secure permission to interview the targeted adolescent, and to ensure the collection of comparative data to examine potential nonresponse bias from households without adolescent participation. All interviews with both parents and adolescents were conducted using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) technology. From the surveys of parents and adolescents, the principal investigators created one data file by attaching the data from the parents to the records of their respective adolescents. Adolescents were asked whether violence and drug abuse were problems in their schools and communities and what types of violence they had personally witnessed. They were also asked about other stressful events in their lives, such as the loss of a family member, divorce, unemployment, moving to a new home or school, serious illness or injury, and natural disaster. Questions regarding history of sexual assault, physical assault, and harsh physical discipline elicited a description of the event and perpetrator, extent of injuries, age at abuse, whether alcohol or drugs were involved, and who was informed of the incident. Information was also gathered on the delinquent behavior of respondents and their friends, including destruction of property, assault, theft, sexual assault, and gang activity. Other questions covered history of personal and family substance use and mental health indicators, such as major depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, weight changes, sleeping disorders, and problems concentrating. Demographic information was gathered from the adolescents on age, race, gender, number of people living in household, and grade in school. Parents were asked whether they were concerned about violent crime, affordable child care, drug abuse, educational quality, gangs, and the safety of their children at school. In addition, they were questioned about their own victimization experiences and whether they discussed personal safety issues with their children. Parents also supplied demographic information on gender, marital status, number of children, employment status, education, race, and income.
 
Subject Term(s):adolescents, child care, delinquent behavior, demographic characteristics, family violence, life events, mental health, school violence, substance abuse, victimization
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:January 1995 - June 1995
 
Date(s) of Collection:January 1995 - June 1995
 
Unit of Observation:Individuals.
 
Universe:Adolescents aged 12-17 in the United States.
 
Data Type:survey data
 
Data Collection Notes:The user guide, codebook, and data collection instruments are provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.
 

Methodology

Sample:The study consisted of two subsamples, a national probability household sample of 3,161 adolescents and a probability oversample of 862 adolescents residing in central city areas of the United States, for a total sample of 4,023. Because the parent or guardian interviews were conducted prior to the adolescent interviews, the 4,023 participants in the parent sample were also selected from a national probability sample of households and a probability oversample of central city households. To construct the initial national probability sample, a multistage, stratified, area probability, random-digit-dialing sampling procedure that had four steps was used. First, the United States was stratified geographically by Census region and a population-based subsample allocation was developed for each geographic stratum. In other words, the number of households drawn for the sample from each geographic stratum was allocated in proportion to the actual distribution of the population residing within each stratum, according to the most recent Census estimates. In the second step, telephone banks within each geographic stratum were systematically selected utilizing the comprehensive database of working telephone banks maintained by Schulman, Ronca, and Bucuvalas, Inc. (SRBI). Third, random-digit-dialing was used to sample telephone households within the telephone banks selected in the second stage. Nonworking household (e.g., business) numbers were immediately replaced by other numbers selected in the same fashion as the initial numbers. Non-answering numbers were called again four times before being replaced. In the fourth step, an adult respondent in each household was screened to determine if there were any adolescents aged 12-17 currently living in the household or if any had lived in the household at least four months during the previous year. In households with multiple eligible adolescents, a systematic selection (i.e., "most recent birthday" technique) was made to determine which eligible individual would be designated as the respondent. Construction of the central city oversample followed the same procedures except for the initial geographic stratification step. This step was replaced using the census classification of counties by types of place and specifying the target population as households located within these urban counties. Adolescents who were potentially excluded from the study included those residing in institutional settings, in households without a parent or guardian (e.g., emancipated minors, married adolescents living on their own) or in a house without telephones, those who did not speak English or Spanish, and those whose parents did not give permission for them to be interviewed.
 
Data Source:telephone interviews
 
Mode of Data Collection:Data were collected through telephone interviews with adolescents and their parents or guardians.
 
Response Rates:Parents in 90.1 percent of eligible households completed interviews and parents in 78.9 percent of eligible households gave permission for their adolescents to be interviewed. Adolescent interviews were completed in 75 percent of eligible households, 83.2 percent of households with completed parent interviews, and 95 percent of households with parental permission.
 
Presence of Common Scales:Several Likert-type scales were used.
 
Extent of Processing:ICPSR checked for undocumented codes, standardized missing data codes, and reformatted the data. Hardcopy documentation was converted into a PDF file. ICPSR also produced a codebook and SAS and SPSS data definition statements for this collection.
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:2000-06-05
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: National Survey of Adolescents in the United States, 1995
 

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