Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement

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This project will collect high school transcripts for the Wave of sample members of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). These newly collected data, plus a large number of variables that summarize and describe the transcripts, will be made part of the publicly distributed Add Health data set. Add Health was designed to explore adolescents' health behaviors, with an emphasis on the influence of social context that includes families, peers, neighborhoods and school, but it has limited measures of academic activities and achievement. Transcript data are technically challenging to analyze, but they can lead to an understanding of students' academic experiences, as well as opportunity and stratification. This transcript study will provide rich new data for the study of academic achievement and opportunity, and it will enhance the utility of the current Add Health data set. This is a large and complex project with two major phases and an interdisciplinary research team, overseen by an Advisory Board. The first phase involves the collection and coding of high school transcripts and associated data for approximately 18,700 Wave Ill Add Health sample members, plus a sample of 2,000 of their partners. Westat, an experienced data collection firm, will conduct the data collection and initial coding. Special attention will be paid to ensuring respondent and school security. The second phase of the project, conducted at The University of Texas, involves the construction of additional variables to measure educational stratification and achievement, adapted for the Add Health design. These additional variables are essential to stimulate wide use of the transcript data, as well as to support initial analyses. Consistent with the emphasis of Add Health on social context, the variables will be useful for multilevel analyses. Westat coded measures will include coursework, standardized test scores and attendance. UT will construct measures of academic achievement (including course sequence status and grades), the course taking context, school transitions, and school context. In addition to producing public access data, the investigators will produce extensive documentation about the data and the procedures used to produce them. They will conduct public workshops in a number of settings to introduce the data to users and encourage their use. They will also publish a variety of initial analyses on diverse topics.