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The NLSY97 standalone data files are intended to be used by crime researchers for analyses without requiring supplementation from the main NLSY97 data set. The data contain age-based calendar year variables on arrests and incarcerations, self-reported criminal activity, substance use, demographic variables and relevant variables from other domains which are created using the NLSY97 data. The main NLSY97 data are available for public use and can be accessed online at the NLS Investigator Web site and at the NACJD Web site (as ICPSR 3959). Questionnaires, user guides and other documentation are available at the same links. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) was designed by the United States Department of Labor, comprising the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) Series. Created to be representative of United States residents in 1997 who were born between the years of 1980 and 1984, the NLSY97 documents the transition from school to work experienced by today's youths through data collection from 1997. The majority of the oldest cohort members (age 16 as of December 31, 1996) were still in school during the first survey round and the youngest respondents (age 12) had not yet entered the labor market.

These surveys of 12th-grade students are part of a series that explores changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of contemporary American youth. Students are randomly assigned to complete one of six questionnaires, each with a different subset of topical questions, but all containing a set of "core" questions on demographics and drug use. There are about 1,400 variables across the questionnaires. Drugs covered by this survey include tobacco, smokeless tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, hashish, prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, LSD, hallucinogens, amphetamines (stimulants), Ritalin (methylphenidate), sedatives/barbiturates, tranquilizers, cocaine, crack cocaine, GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), ecstasy, methamphetamine, and heroin. Other topics include attitudes toward religion, changing roles for women, educational aspirations, self-esteem, exposure to drug education, and violence and crime (both in and out of school).

Highlights for 2019:

• Change in methodology: half of the MTF schools completed in-class surveys on tablets loaded with the survey; the other half completed traditional paper-and-pencil surveys. Also see the Methodology section on this page for an overview and the codebook for details.
• Expansion and revision of the study documentation in the codebook
• New documentation available for download detailing the question adds/drops/changes to the surveys
• Availability of supplemental data sets for previously unreleased questions

Two supplemental data files (DS8 and DS9) have been included this year by the Principal Investigators. These files each include three administrative variables for year (V1), form (V3), and ID (RESPONDENT_ID) along with a few additional variables of survey questions not previously released for Form 5 (DS8) and Form 6 (DS9) between the years 2016 to 2018. These same variables are already present in the main 2019 data files for Form 5 (DS6) and Form 6 (DS7). The front section of the codebook provides details about each of the variables. There are also instructions on how to merge the supplemental data on to the main data files for the previous three years:

• 2018 data (ICPSR 37416)
• 2017 data (ICPSR 37182)
• 2016 data (ICPSR 36798)

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

The research project has tested a possible explanation for the Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s and especially 2000s: the increasing rates at which psychotropic drugs are prescribed, especially to children and adolescents. Psychotropic drugs are often prescribed to youth for mental health conditions that involve disruptive and impulsive behaviors and learning difficulties. The effects of these drugs are thus expected to lead to the decrease in the juveniles' involvement in delinquency and violence. The effects of two legislative changes are hypothesized to have contributed to the increased prescribing of psychotropic drugs to children growing up in families in poverty: 1) changes in eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that made it possible for poor children to qualify for additional financial assistance due to mental health conditions (1990 and 1996), and 2) changes in school accountability rules following the passage of No Child Left Behind Act (2002) that put pressure on schools in some low-income areas to qualify academically challenged students as having ADHD or other learning disabilities.

The objectives of the project are: 1) to assemble a data set, using state-level data from various publicly available sources, containing information about trends in juvenile delinquency and violence, trends in psychotropic drug prescribing to children and adolescents, and various control variables associated with these two sets of trends; 2) to test the proposed hypotheses about the effect of increasing psychotropic medication prescribing to children and adolescents on juvenile delinquency and violence, using the assembled data set; and 3) to disseminate the scientific knowledge gained through this study among criminal justice researchers, psychiatric and public health scientists, as well as among a wider audience of practitioners and the general public.

This collection includes one SPSS file (Dataset_NIJ_GRANT_2014-R2-CX-0003_DV-IV_3-29-17.sav; n=1,275, 113 variables) and one Word syntax file (doc36775-0001_syntax.docx).

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) series involved three rounds of data collection, this study NatSCEV I (baseline), NatSCEV II, and NatSCEV III. For more information on other parts to the series, please use the following links:

NatSCEV II (ICPSR 36177) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36177.v1

NatSCEV III (ICPSR 36523) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36523.v1

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence I was designed to obtain lifetime and one-year incidence estimates of a comprehensive range of childhood victimizations across gender, race, and developmental stage. Conducted between January and July, 2008, it assessed the experiences of a nationally representative sample of 4,549 children aged 1 month to 17 years living in the contiguous United States (excluding New Hampshire).

The primary sample of households was selected from a nationwide sampling frame of residential telephone numbers by random digit dialing (RDD). A second sample was drawn by over-sampling United States telephone exchanges that had a population of 70 percent or more of African American, Hispanic, or low-income households.

A short interview was conducted with an adult caregiver (usually a parent) to obtain family demographic information. One child was randomly selected from all eligible children in a household by selecting the child with the most recent birthday. The survey used an enhanced version of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ), an inventory of childhood victimization. This version of the JVQ obtains reports on 48 forms of offenses against youth that cover five general areas of concern including: conventional crime, child maltreatment, peer and sibling victimization, sexual assault, and witnessing and indirect victimization. Follow-up questions for each victimization item gathered additional information about the victimization incident.

The data set has 1,824 variables and 4,549 cases.

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) series involved three rounds of data collection, NatSCEV I (baseline), this study NatSCEV II, and NatSCEV III. For more information on other parts to the series, please use the following links:

NatSCEV I (ICPSR 35203) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35203.v1

NatSCEV III (ICPSR 36523) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36523.v1

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence II was designed to obtain lifetime and one-year incidence estimates of a comprehensive range of childhood victimizations across gender, race, and developmental stage. Conducted between March, 2011 and January, 2012, it assessed the experiences of a nationally representative sample of 4,503 children aged 1 month to 18 years living in the contiguous United States (excluding New Hampshire).

A nationwide sample which excluded any phone numbers with area codes assigned within the state of New Hampshire was constructed using four frames: (1) 801,317 landline telephone numbers from which telephone households could be drawn by random digit dialing (RDD); (2) 5,000 cell-phone telephone numbers from which a sample of cell phone users could be drawn by RDD; (3) an address-based sample (ABS) of 70,924 cell phone and residential numbers; and (4) a pre-screened sample of 3,573 telephone numbers of households with children from a recent national RDD survey. The compiled frame yielded 3,259 residential RDD interviews, 31 cell phone RDD interviews, 750 ABS interviews, and 463 pre-screened sample interviews for a total of 4,503 interviews.

A short interview was conducted with an adult caregiver (usually a parent) to obtain family demographic information. One child was randomly selected from all eligible children in a household by selecting the child with the most recent birthday. If the selected child was 1 month to 9 years old, the main interview was conducted with the caregiver. If the selected child was 10-17 years old, the main interview was conducted with the child.

The survey used an enhanced version of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ), an inventory of childhood victimization. This version of the JVQ obtains reports on 53 forms of offenses against youth that cover six general areas of concern including: conventional crime, child maltreatment, peer and sibling victimization, sexual victimization, witnessing and indirect victimization, and internet victimization. Follow-up questions for each victimization item gathered additional information about the victimization incident.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

The purpose of the study was to investigate potential correlates of labor trafficking in an effort to identify indicators of labor trafficking that could be used by state and local law enforcement as signals that labor trafficking may be taking place in their communities. Stakeholder interviews with individuals from organizations who serve migrant workers (n=24) were piloted in September 2010 with the larger data collection effort occurring between October 2011 and March 2012. In-person interviews were conducted with farmworkers (Farmworker Data, n=380) who may have been experiencing labor exploitation or trafficking. The field data collection activities began in September 2012. Interview data were collected at residential migrant labor camps, at community events, and in Western North Carolina, at integrated housing and locations frequented by farmworkers. Finally, researchers extracted secondary data from a number of sources to create profiles of each county (County Data, n=17) in which interviews were conducted.

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) series involved three rounds of data collection, NatSCEV I (baseline), NatSCEV II, and this study, NatSCEV III. For more information on other parts to the series, please use the following links:

NatSCEV I (ICPSR 35203) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35203.v1

NatSCEV II (ICPSR 36177) - http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36177.v1

The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence III was designed to obtain lifetime and one-year incidence estimates of a comprehensive range of childhood victimizations across gender, race, and developmental stage. Conducted between August 2013 and April 2014, it assessed the experiences of a nationally representative sample of 4,000 children less than 18 years of age living in the contiguous United States (excluding New Hampshire).

A short interview was conducted with an adult caregiver (usually a parent) to obtain family demographic information. One child was randomly selected from all eligible children in a household by selecting the child with the most recent birthday. If the selected child was 1 month to 9 years old, the main interview was conducted with the caregiver. If the selected child was 10-17 years old, the main interview was conducted with the child.

The NatSCEV III questionnaire was very similar to the previous wave minus the extended family exposure to violence follow-up section that was included in NatSCEV II. The questionnaire asked for household demographics and questions about the focal child's health. A series of 52 juvenile victimization screening questions (JVQ) were asked, and for every screener the respondent endorsed, a series of follow-up questions about that victimization was asked. In addition, the survey included sections on lifetime and past year adversity, internet victimization, community disorder, bullying, delinquency, and the child/parent relationship.

The Denver Youth Survey (DYS) is part of the larger "Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency" initiated by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 1986. The DYS is a longitudinal study of problem and successful behavior over the life course that focuses on delinquency, drug use, victimization, and mental health. The DYS is based on a probability sample of households in "high-risk" neighborhoods of Denver, Colorado. These neighborhoods were selected on the basis of their social ecology in terms of population and housing characteristics. Only socially disorganized neighborhoods with high official crime rates (top one-third) were included. The survey respondents include 1,528 children and youth who were 7, 9, 11, 13, or 15 years old in 1987, and one of their parents, who lived in one of the more than 20,000 randomly selected households.

The survey respondents include 807 boys and 721 girls and include White (10 percent), Latino (45 percent), and African American (33 percent) youth, as well as 12 percent from other racial/ethnic backgrounds. The child and youth respondents, along with one caretaker, were interviewed annually from 1988 until 1992, and annually from 1995 until 1999. The age range covered by the study is from age 7 through age 26.

The dataset contains 1,528 cases and 22,081 variables.

The Denver Youth Survey (DYS) is part of the larger "Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency" initiated by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 1986. It is a longitudinal study of problem and successful behavior over the life course that focuses on delinquency, drug use, victimization, and mental health. DYS variables also address family demographics, neighborhood characteristics, parenting, and involvement in social roles.

The DYS is based on a probability sample of households in "high-risk" neighborhoods of Denver, Colorado. These neighborhoods were selected on the basis of their social ecology in terms of population and housing characteristics. Only socially disorganized neighborhoods with high (top one-third) official crime rates were included. The survey respondents include 1,528 children and youth who were 7, 9, 11, 13, or 15 years old in 1987, and one of their parents, who lived in one of the more than 20,000 randomly selected households.

The survey respondents include 807 boys and 721 girls and include White (10%), Latino (45%), and African American (33%) youth, as well as 12% from other racial/ethnic backgrounds. The child and youth respondents, along with one caretaker, were interviewed annually from 1988 until 1992 (waves 1-5), annually from 1995 until 1999 (waves 6-10), and in 2003 (wave 11). The study covers an age range of 7 through 26.