An Overview of the Study
The Alabama Adolescent Survey has been an ongoing survey conducted among adolescents for the purpose of tracking the occurrence of behaviors and related psychosocial measures. Students from various areas of the state have participated in 1988, 1990, 1993, 1998, and 2001. Data are reported on selected measures utilizing percentages. For this reason, interpretation of these values needs to be conducted with caution.
Information contained in this report provides snap shots in time of the participating counties in Alabama. The historical data that examines behaviors over time always uses the same counties to adjust for possible variations due to the locality. Other data not of a historical nature, generally incorporate all the counties to allow for a more powerful analyses. Analyses in previous reports and studies have shown very little variation between rural or urban counties. Throughout this series of surveys, a number of different counties have participated. The identities’ of these school districts are kept confidential.
We recommend that the data be used as the first step in identifying areas of need. Additional assessment and program planning would be a logical continuation of this process. Program planning should go beyond the extent of this report to ensure that local needs are met.
Historical Developments
The 1988 survey examined approximately 3,400 students equally divided between grade 8 and grade 10 from six school districts. In 1990, 3,200 students from these same districts participated. In 1993, approximately 6,500 grade 8 and grade 10 students participated from nine school districts. In 1998 data collection moved from involving younger students and, approximately 2,300 students participated. Students were recruited from nine school districts with the majority coming from grade 10 and some coming from grade 9. In 2001 data collection was patterned after the previous year and approximately 1,900 grade 9 and grade 10 students participated.
Initially, in 1988, school districts were randomly invited to participate, but given the nature of the questionnaire, many school districts declined to participate and the study eventually settled on two rural districts, two semi-rural districts, and two metropolitan districts. This has been the general pattern of sample selection across the first three waves of data collection. In 1998, the majority of school districts were from rural settings, however almost half of the students assessed lived in metropolitan settings. The 2001 survey was also very similar in nature to its 1998 predecessor.
A number of previous comparisons have examined rural and metropolitan students with findings showing that rates of behaviors and psychosocial measures are not influenced substantially by geographic location. In addition, Alabama comparisons with national data have clearly shown that the data collected in the Alabama Adolescent Survey are representative and rarely deviate from the national expected norm by fewer than a few percentage points.
Historical data are compared across the four time periods of the study and utilize four core counties that have been involved in all the surveys. To allow for multiple comparisons over the various time periods, we have elected to report on the largest two age groups and have collapsed the 15 and 16 year olds into the reporting category. Therefore all data are from 15 and 16 year olds. This age group represents the majority of students who have answered the survey. An overview of the samples follows.
1988 – 52% female 63% white Total N = 2,002
70% 15 yrs 30% 16 yrs
1990 - 53% female 66% white Total N = 1,482
70% 15 yrs 30% 16 yrs
1993 - 54% female 62% white Total N = 3,101
46% 15 yrs 54% 16 yrs
1998 - 58% female 55% white Total N = 1,822
47% 15 yrs 53% 16 yrs
2001 - 55% female 47% white Total N = 1,414
55% 15 yrs 45% 16 yrs
NOTE: Most categories show adequate representation to allow comparisons to be made across the time periods.