National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), 1994-2008: Contextual Data [Restricted Use]

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-1995 school year. The Add Health cohort has been followed into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent in 2008, when the sample was aged 24-32. Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents' social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors in adolescence are linked to health and achievement outcomes in young adulthood. The fourth wave of interviews expanded the collection of biological data in Add Health to understand the social, behavioral, and biological linkages in health trajectories as the Add Health cohort ages through adulthood. The files contained in this component of the Add Health restricted data are Waves I-III Contextual Files Data, Waves I-II Neighborhood Data, Wave I Spatial Analysis Data, Waves III-IV Grouping File Data, and Waves III-IV Census Region data. The contextual files data contain community contextual variables based on state, county, tract, and block group levels derived from Waves I, II, and III addresses. The neighborhood data and grouping file data contain pseudo state, county, tract, and block group variables that allow grouping Add Health respondents geographically. Wave I Spatial Analysis Data include X, Y coordinates that can be used to calculate distances between friends in a school community. For more information, please see the study website.