Design Focus
The Add Health research design postulates that the differential health of adolescents has three sources:
- Different social environments. Social environments can be conceptualized at many levels of aggregation, from the family to the community.
- Different health-related behaviors. Differing behaviors may be related to attributes such as intelligence, predispositions, personality, skills, and physical characteristics.
- Different vulnerabilities and strengths. The same environment and/or the same behavior can affect individuals differently depending on their robustness and degree of susceptibility, which can originate in differing experiences or genetic endowments.
Scope of Data
The Add Health study collects data to use in exploring the influences of both the individual attributes of adolescents and the attributes of their various environments on health and health-related behavior in vital areas such as these:
- diet
- physical activity
- health-service use
- morbidity
- injury
- violence
- sexual behavior
- contraception
- sexually transmitted infections
- pregnancy
- suicidal intentions/thoughts
- substance use/abuse
- runaway behavior
Data are collected also on attributes such as these:
- height
- weight
- pubertal development
- mental health status (focusing on depression, the most common mental health problem among adolescents)
- chronic and disabling conditions
