Diet, nutrition and sex: New teen data have it all

Massive data set on adolescents is available to research psychologists.

By Scott Sleek
Monitor staff

It?s the largest, most comprehensive study of American teen-agers ever conducted, and it?s giving psychologists the chance to further their own exploration of adolescent health and behavior.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), a federally funded project supported primarily by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, has collected responses from more than 90,000 adolescents across the country since it began in 1994.

Led by a nine-member, multidisciplinary research team, researchers and students involved in the ongoing project are looking at such factors of adolescent life as diet and nutrition, sexual behavior, family relationships, use of health services, violence, and substance abuse. They began releasing their findings last fall and are expected to continue analyzing the data for at least a decade.

The researchers are making the results available to researchers all over the world to use for further scientific studies and policy analysis.

'We really want this data set to be mined, and we?re hoping that psychologists get in there and tap this tremendous resource,' says James Jaccard, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York and a member of the ADD Health research team.

The data have some unique features that can be useful to psychologists, Jaccard says. In particular, it involves not only information collected from the adolescents themselves, but also from many of their parents, friends and other people with whom they interact daily, providing a rich view of the adolescent?s family and social environment.

'Too often in psychology, the emphasis is on the individual, without taking into consideration the context in which the adolescent lives?the family context, the neighborhood context, social and peer context,' Jaccard explains. 'This database is very strong in terms of contextual data.'

The approach can help measure, for example, how a teen-agers? relationships with their parents influence their relationships with friends or romantic partners, he notes.

The first wave of results from the project were released in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association (278: p. 823?832). They showed that teen-agers were less likely to engage in risky behavior, such as substance abuse, violence and early sexual activity if they:

? Felt close to their parents.

? Worked at a job less than 20 hours a week.

? Physically appear to be their age, rather than looking younger or older.

? Placed strong importance on religion and prayer.

? Had no access to guns, alcohol or drugs in their homes.

Jaccard, who studies such issues as parent-adolescent communication, was among 10 researchers on the multidis-ciplinary ADD Health team headed by J. Richard Udry, PhD, a professor of maternal and child health and sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although he?s still analyzing the data, Jaccard?s research indicates that parents tend to underestimate their children?s involvement in sexual activity. He also finds that adolescents tend to overestimate their parents? acceptance of their having sex.

Another psychologist involved in the study is David C. Rowe, PhD, a family studies professor at the University of Arizona. Rowe is investigating siblings and genetic relatedness.

ADD Health data is available in two forms?a subset available to the public and a restricted set that can be accessed only by certified researchers who sign a contract agreeing to protect the confidentiality of the study participants.

For information on the public-use data, contact: Sociometrics Corp., 170 State St., Suite 260, Los Altos, CA 94022-2812, (650) 949-3282, fax: (650) 949-3299.

For information on the restricted data set, contact: Jo Jones, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, CB #8120, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516-3997.

Comprehensive information about the ADD Health study can be obtained online. The address is talltoad.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/.