Americans View Their Mental Health, 1957 (ICPSR 3503)

Published: Feb 16, 1992

Principal Investigator(s):
Gerald Gurin; Joseph Veroff; Sheila Feld

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03503.v1

Version V1

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Project Description

Summary

In 1957, the United States Congress established the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health to evaluate the nation's resources for coping with both the psychological and economic problems of mental illness. The Commission sponsored a nationwide survey, which was conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, to assess the subjective mental health of "normal" American adults and to determine in detail how they coped with problems of adjustment. During the spring of 1957, a sample of American adults was interviewed on various areas in which problems might arise, including marriage, parenthood, employment, and general social relationships. Information about leisure time, past and present physical and mental health, and motives for affiliation, achievement, and power were also sought. Three questionnaire forms were employed, each addressed to a randomly selected third of the sample.

Citation

Gurin, Gerald, Veroff, Joseph, and Feld, Sheila. Americans View Their Mental Health, 1957. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1992-02-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03503.v1

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Funding

Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health

Subject Terms

achievement adjustment adults attitudes careers counseling services demographic characteristics failure health attitudes health behavior interpersonal conflict jobs satisfaction leisure marriage memberships mental disorders mental health personal adjustment psychological wellbeing quality of life religious affiliation self evaluation social interaction social roles work attitudes

Geographic Coverage

United States

Scope of Project

Time Period(s)

1957

Date of Collection

1957 (spring)

Data Collection Notes

Produced by the University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center, 1957.

Methodology

Sample

Multistage area probability sample.

Universe

Americans aged 21 years and older living in private households in the United States in 1957.

Data Source

personal interviews

Data Type(s)

survey data

Version(s)

Original Release Date

1984-05-10

Version Date

1992-02-16

Version History

1984-05-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.
Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.
The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.

This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.