Our Research

This study examined the association between multiple minority statuses and reports of suicidal thoughts, depression, and self-esteem among adolescents. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to examine mental health outcomes across racial/ethnic groups for same-sex-attracted youths and female youths. Hispanic/Latino, African American, and White female adolescents reported more suicidal thoughts, higher depression, and lower self-esteem compared with male adolescents in their racial/ethnic group. Same-sex-attracted youths did not consistently demonstrate compromised mental health across racial/ethnic groups. Follow-up analyses show that White same-sex-attracted female adolescents reported the most compromised mental health compared with other White adolescents. However, similar trends were not found for racial/ethnic minority female youths with same-sex attractions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. The Add Health cohort has been followed into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent in 2008, when the sample was aged 24-32. Add Health re-interviewed cohort members in a Wave V follow-up from 2016-2018 to collect social, environmental, behavioral, and biological data with which to track the emergence of chronic disease as the cohort moves through their fourth decade of life.

Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors in adolescence are linked to health and achievement outcomes in young adulthood. The fourth wave of interviews expanded the collection of biological data in Add Health to understand the social, behavioral, and biological linkages in health trajectories as the Add Health cohort ages through adulthood, and the fifth wave of data collection continues this biological data expansion.

This program project is directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.