Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 2012 (ICPSR 34861)

Time Period(s)

2012

Date of Collection

2012 (Spring)

Data Collection Notes

MTF does not release detailed geography codes in its public use files because of the disclosure risk it would cause. The MTF sample is drawn to generate representative samples of the four Census Bureau regions of the country (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West), but it does not generate representative samples of smaller geographic areas such as states, counties, or cities. For additional information about data that is withheld from the public use files please contact MTF directly at mtfinformation@umich.edu.

Frequency and percentage distributions displayed in the 2012 codebooks are unweighted, rather than weighted by variable "ARCHIVE_WT" (previously named "V5") as they had been in previous years. This change was made to simplify both the production of the codebooks and their interpretation by the analyst.

With the approval of the MTF Principal Investigators ICPSR created a series of dichotomous recodes for 10 substances for the three standard time periods (lifetime, past 12 months, and past 30 days). The substances include tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, LSD, other psychedelics, amphetamines, sedatives/barbiturates, tranquilizers, inhalants, and other narcotics. These variables have been placed at the end of the file. Each variable has the same name and label as the original, but with the addition of the letter "D" at the end of the variable name and the words "(dichotomous recode)" included at the end of the variable label. This was only done for the core file.

Variables omitted from the Western region questionnaires are noted in each codebook.

To protect the privacy of respondents, all variables that could be used to identify individuals have been collapsed or recoded in the public use files. These modifications should not affect analytic uses of the public use files.

Using these new dichotomous recode variables ICPSR has created interactive maps to show the weighted response for each dichotomous variable by Census region. To create a map simply select the desired year/grade and question/variable. Then click on "Go". The resulting map will rank the regions by color. The Census region with the darkest shade will show the highest frequency of use. A frequency table is also provided.

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

A user guide is provided with the study documentation. It contains a year-to-year cross-time question index for the MTF 12th-grade surveys, which is sorted by subject area, item reference number, and questionnaire form.

Sample

A multistage area probability sample design was used involving three selection stages: (1) geographic areas or primary sampling units (PSUs), (2) schools (or linked groups of schools) within PSUs, and (3) students within sampled schools. Of the 72 PSUs, 8 were selected with certainty, 10 were selected with a probability of .50, and the remainder were selected using a probability based on their 2000 Census household count. Generally speaking, in schools with more than 350 seniors, a sample of seniors or classes was drawn. In schools with less than 350 seniors, all seniors were asked to participate unless logistical challenges required a sample be taken. Each school was asked to participate for two years so that each year one-half of the sample would be replaced. Schools refusing participation were replaced with similar schools in terms of geographic location, size, and type of school (e.g., public, private/Catholic, private/non-Catholic). The participation rate among schools has been between 66 and 85 percent since the inception of the study. The total sample of 12th graders was divided into 6 subsamples, each to be administered a different form of the questionnaire. "Core" drug and demographic questions were included in all questionnaire forms.

Universe

High school seniors in the contiguous United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

survey data

Mode of Data Collection

on-site questionnaire

Response Rates

The overall student response rate for 2012 was 83 percent.

Original Release Date

2013-10-29

Version Date

2015-03-26

Version History

2014-01-27 The Principal Investigator provided new data files due to an error in the assignment of respondent ID's causing some cases to be placed in the wrong file. This only applies to forms 5 and 6. This also caused the Core file to change as well.

2013-10-29 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.
• Created online analysis version with question text.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

2015-03-26 ICPSR created new dichotomous variables and placed them at the end of the core file.

Weight

Each of the seven parts contains a weight variable, ARCHIVE_WT. They were originally varied by school but were modified to protect respondent confidentiality. Users should use the weight variable for all analyses, the results of which will differ slightly from published data tables that used original data.