Two Longitudinal Studies
The prospective longitudinal research design of the Denver Youth Survey and the Pittsburgh Youth Study permits the investigation of developmental processes over the life course. The two projects have involved more than 3,000 inner-city children and youth who, at the beginning of the research in 1987, ranged in age from 7 to 15. Youth and parents have been interviewed in private settings at regular intervals.
Denver Youth Survey
The Denver Youth Survey is based on a survey of more than 20,000 households randomly selected from high-risk neighborhoods in Denver, CO. The sample consists of 1,527 youth, approximately equal numbers of boys and girls, who were ages 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 in 1987. The ethnic composition of the sample is 33 percent African American, 45 percent Hispanic, 10 percent white, and 12 percent other, as self-identified by the respondents. This Bulletin focuses on the three oldest cohorts of youth (464 males and 411 females), who were ages 11, 13, and 15 at the start of the study, and covers the first 5 years of the study.
Interviews have been conducted annually with each youth and a primary caretaker (usually the mother figure of the household). Attrition has been low in this study; more than 92 percent of the respondents completed interviews annually from 1988 to 1992.
Pittsburgh Youth Study
The Pittsburgh Youth Study initially took a random sample of boys in the first, fourth, and seventh grades in inner-city public schools in 1987. Through interviews with each boy, one of his parents, and a teacher, the boys were screened for the presence of risk factors involving 21 antisocial behaviors. The final sample consisted of 1,517 boys, including 30 percent of the interviewees who were most disruptive and a random sample of the remaining boys. Slightly more than half the boys identified themselves as African American and the remainder as white, a ratio similar to that found in Pittsburgh public schools.1 This Bulletin focuses on youth who were in the seventh grade at the start of the study (n=506).
Participants in the seventh grade cohort were followed from 1987 (average age, 13) to 1993 (average age, 18.5). Followups were initially conducted every 6 months and later once per year. At each assessment, the boy’s primary caretaker (i.e., the person having primary responsibility for the child within the household) and teacher were also interviewed. In most cases (91 percent), the caretaker was the boy’s biological mother, stepmother, or adoptive mother. Attrition has been quite low in this study, with an average participation rate across phases of 92.7 percent.
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