Pittsburgh Youth Study

• In Event: Longitudinal Data Release: Causes and Correlates of Delinquency and Northwestern Juvenile Project

Abstract

The Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS) was initiated to examine the course of delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems in three samples of males randomly selected in 1987-1988 from boys enrolled in Pittsburgh Public Schools. This presentation provides an overview of this longitudinal study including discussion of the key constructs measured, characteristics and retention of the sample, and highlights of potentially fascinating areas for secondary analysis. The PYS consists of multiple follow-up assessments of 1,517 male participants initially recruited when they were in the first (N = 503, called the youngest sample), fourth (N = 508, called the middle sample), and seventh (N = 506, called the oldest sample) grades. The data that is lodged at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data include all raw data for all consecutive six month and yearly assessments that were collected for the youngest (17 waves total), middle (7 waves total), and oldest (16 waves total) cohorts. The researchers have also provided selected constructs for the initial five years of data collection across seven different life domains including delinquency, demographics, drugs, externalizing, family, mental health, parent psychopathology, and an “other miscellaneous” category.

Author

• Dustin Pardini, Arizona State University