Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of Lifestyles and Values of Youth (MF)

DESCRIPTION:  This is an annual series that explores changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of contemporary American youth. Two general types of tasks may be distinguished. The first is to provide a systematic and accurate description of the youth population of interest in a given year, and to quantify the direction and rate of change occurring over time. The second task, more analytic than descriptive involves the explanation of the relationships and trends observed. Each year a large, nationally representative multistage sample of high school seniors in the contiguous United States is asked to respond to approximately 100 drug use and demographic questions plus an average of 200 additional questions on a variety of subjects including attitudes toward government, social institutions, race relations, changing roles of women, educational aspirations, and occupational aims as well as marital and family plans. There are more than 1300 variables in all.

ORIGINATING AGENCY / PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR(S):  Lloyd D. Johnson,  Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O'Malley,  John E. Schulenberg (joined in 1991 - Mainly worked with  8th and 10th grade surveys)

RELATED WEB SITES:  
Monitoring the Future Project Web Site
Online Data Analysis using the MTF available from ICPSR's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA)

PRI FACTULY, AFFILIATES, AND STUDENTS:  Additional waves of data are available for download from ICPSR.  Contact the Data Archivist if interested.