Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools
You are here: Home / FAQ / About Field Work

Questions about Field Work

 

Where can I find reference materials that were used to develop the Add Health questionnaire?

The on-line document "References, Instruments, and Questionnaires Consulted in the Development of the Add Health In-home Adolescent Interview" provides additional information on the resources consulted when constructing the Add Health interview questions.

 

Were foster youth included in the Add Health study? If so, how many were surveyed?

In the Add Health Wave I in-home interview, 61 respondents out of 20,745 were identified as living with a foster mother and/or foster father.

 

How were adolescents identified as eligible for special oversamples for the in-home interview?

An adolescent's answer to a specific question or questions on the In-School Questionnaire determined his or her eligibility for inclusion in an oversample. For example, an adolescent who marked "Chinese" as his or her Asian or Pacific Islander background was eligible for the Chinese oversample. The genetic oversamples were identified in two ways. All adolescents who indicated they were twins were sampled with certainty. When an adolescent indicated at least one other household member in grades 7 through 12 with whom he or she did not share a biological mother and/or biological father, they were added to the pool of potential half-siblings and other, non-related adolescents. Full siblings were not oversampled.

 

How did the interviewer select the parent to interview for the Parent Questionnaire?

The instructions to the interviewer for selecting the parent to interview for the Parent Questionnaire are detailed below.

Parent Interview

The mother (or other female head of the household) of the originally sampled adolescent will be asked to participate in a 40-minute, interviewer-administered, paper-and-pencil survey regarding health status and behaviors of the adolescent, home environment, and her interpersonal relationships. The parent survey instrument does not contain highly sensitive items about the parent; however, it does ask some sensitive questions about the adolescent. The adolescent's mother (or other female head of the household) is the preferred respondent to complete the questionnaire because, according to the results of previous studies, mothers are generally more familiar than fathers with the schooling, health status, and health behaviors of their children.

Identifying the Parent Survey Respondent

Upon your arrival at the household, ask to speak to the student's mother, the preferred respondent to complete the Parent Questionnaire. If the student's mother does not reside in the household, the appropriate respondent is the first person on the following list who lives with the student:

  1. stepmother
  2. other female guardian, such as a legal guardian or grandmother
  3. father
  4. stepfather
  5. other male guardian, such as a legal guardian or grandfather

Do not schedule an interview with a male respondent out of convenience. If the mother, stepmother, or other female guardian lives with the adolescent but is unavailable at the time of your visit, ask your household contact for the best time to reach her. If the preferred female resident refuses to be interviewed, the adolescent's father, stepfather, or other male guardian may act as respondent.

 

What is the retention rate for Add Health?

Due to the design of the study, where Wave I seniors were not selected to be interviewed at Wave II, retention rate is not an appropriate statistic to use to describe Add Health study participation. Any calculated retention rate would be misleading. The response rate at each wave is the best indicator to use.


What are the response rates for each wave?

The response rate for Wave I is 79%.

The response rate for Wave II is 88.6%.

The response rate for Wave III is 77.4%.

The response rate for Wave IV is 80.3%.

 

Which cases were selected to be re-interviewed at Wave II?

16,706 of the Wave I respondents were selected to be re-interviewed at Wave II. In general, respondents who were seniors at Wave I and were not part of a genetic pair and the disabled sample were not selected to be interviewed at Wave II.


Which cases were fielded at Wave III?

20,745 Wave I in-home respondents
+    45 Wave II only genetic respondents

(Data for these respondents have never been released.)
-   687 Wave I cases without a weight and without a genetic sample flag,
______  not selected for Wave III
20,103 Wave III fielded sample

 

Which cases were interviewed at Wave III?

15,170 Wave I respondents interviewed
+    27 Wave II only genetic respondents interviewed
______ 
15,197 Wave III interviewed cases

 

How many of the interviewed Wave III public-use sample were originally selected for the core and high education black samples?

Wave III public-use sample = 4,882

Core sample only = 4,490

High education black sample only = 325

Both samples = 67


Which sections of Wave III were self-administered?

Sections 16-29 were administered using Computer-Assisted Self-Interview (CASI) at Wave III.

 

Which cases were fielded at Wave IV?

Out of 20,745 Wave I in-home respondents, 19,962 cases were fielded at Wave IV. The others were determined ineligible.

 

Which cases were interviewed at Wave IV?

Of the 19,962 fielded cases, 15,701 were interviewed at Wave IV.

 

Which sections of Wave IV were self-administered?

Sections 15 and 17-24 were administered using Computer-Assisted Self-Interview (CASI) at Wave IV.

*Section 18 was both interviewer and self administered

 

When there are gender discrepancies between Wave I and Wave IV, how do you know which one is correct?

The Wave IV gender is the correct gender.