Monitoring the Future (MTF) Public-Use Cross-Sectional Datasets

The Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of Youth annual surveys were designed to explore changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of contemporary American youth. The surveys began in 1975 with 12th-grade students only. Eighth- and 10th-grade student surveys were added in 1991 under the title Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (8th- and 10th-Grade Surveys) and, in 1996, the designation "12th-Grade Survey" was added to the titles of the subsequent 12th-grade surveys. When examining the issues covered by the series, two general types of tasks may be distinguished. The first task is to provide a systematic and accurate description of the youth population of interest in a given year and to quantify the direction and rate of change occurring over time. The second task, more analytic than descriptive, involves the explanation of the relationships and trends observed. Each year, large, distinct, nationally representative samples of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students in the United States are asked to respond to drug use and demographic questions, as well as to additional questions on a variety of subjects, including attitudes toward religion, parental influences, changing roles of women, educational aspirations, self-esteem, exposure to sex and drug education, and violence and crime - both in and out of school. In each grade, students are randomly assigned to complete questionnaires with a subset of topical questions in addition to a set of core questions on demographics and drug use. For a guide to the questions asked each year in each questionnaire, along with their subject areas and variable names, users may refer to the question indexes under the For Researchers section below.

For more information, visit the Monitoring the Future Web site.

Years Produced: Annually. Note: the 1975 data is not available. Data available from NAHDAP are the annual cross-sectional datasets

For more information about the MTF Restricted-Use Data, see Monitoring the Future (MTF) Restricted-Use Cross-Sectional Datasets

For Researchers