Waves I and II

The public-use dataset for Waves I and II contains information collected in 1994–96 from Add Health’s nationally representative sample of adolescents. This dataset includes Wave I and II respondents and consists of one-half of the core sample, chosen at random, and one-half of the oversample of African-American adolescents with a parent who has a college degree. The total number of respondents in this dataset is approximately 6,500.

The Waves I and II public-use dataset includes information from each of the following sources (as available):

• In-School Questionnaire
• Wave I In-Home Interview
• Add Health Picture Vocabulary Test (AHPVT), an abbreviated version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised, with age-standardized scores for adolescent respondents
• Wave I Parent Questionnaire
• Wave II In-Home Interview
• contextual data
• in-school network data

Wave III

The Wave III public-use data are helpful in analyzing the transition between adolescence and young adulthood. A total of 4,882 of the original Wave I respondents were re-interviewed between August 2001 and April 2002. Wave III respondents were between 18 and 26 years old.

The Wave III dataset includes eight data files:

• Main Respondent File: 1859 variables, including the In-Home Questionnaire data, grand sampling weights, AHPVT scores, and biospecimen data for 4,882 respondents
• Relationship Table File: 19 variables and 13,998 relationship records
• Pregnancy Table File: 7 variables and 2,348 pregnancy records
• Relationship Detail File: 209 variables and detailed information on 12,680 relationships
• Completed Pregnancies File: 39 variables and information on 2,163 completed pregnancies
• Current Pregnancies File: 39 variables and information on 180 current pregnancies
• Live Births File: 20 variables and information about 1,357 live births
• Children and Parenting File: 74 variables and detailed information about 1,323 children
• Education Data
  

Getting Public-Use Data

Public-use data are available from two different sources: the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and Sociometrics. Users may obtain the data from either source, depending on their needs.

Downloading public-use data from ICPSR

ICPSR distributes the Add Health public-use data at no charge through its Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) project. Public-use data are available for download from the DSDR website. To download the data, returning users must log in to their MyData account; new users are required to create a MyData account. MyData is the user registration and authentication system for the ICPSR and DSDR websites. The system uses an email address as a login ID and requires a password. For more information or to obtain the public-use data from ICPSR, visit the DSDR Add Health page.  

Obtaining public-use data from Sociometrics

Sociometrics distributes the public-use data on CD-ROM for a fee. The data are distributed in a variety of formats, including SPSS, SAS and ASCII. Follow the links below to read more about public-use data sets available from Sociometrics:

Waves I, II, and III
Waves I and II only
Wave III only
Education Data

For more information or to obtain the public-use data from Sociometrics, contact:

Sociometrics Corporation
170 State Street, Suite 260
Los Altos, California 94022-2812
telephone: 650-949-3282
fax: 650-949-3299
socio@socio.com

Limited online analysis

Through its Data Sharing for Demographic Research project, ICPSR supports a system for analyzing the public-use data online. The online analysis system allows users to run both simple and complex analyses, recode and compute new variables, and subset variables or cases for downloading. To access the online analysis system, users must register with MyData, the user registration and authentication system for the ICPSR and DSDR websites. MyData uses an email address as a login ID and requires a password. For more information or to access the ICPSR online analysis system, visit the Add Health online analysis page of the DSDR website.