Northwestern Juvenile Project

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

Abstract

This presentation describes key features of the Northwestern Juvenile Project (NJP) – the first large-scale longitudinal study of psychiatric disorders and long-term outcomes of delinquent youth after detention. The NJP recruited a stratified random sample of 1829 youth (1172 males, 657 females) from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (Chicago, Illinois) between 1995 and 1998. Youth were median age 15 years; 4.2% refused to participate. Project staff conducted face-to-face structured interviews at the detention center and reinterviewed participants up to 9 times over 12 years. At follow-ups, participants were interviewed wherever they were living, in the community or in correctional facilities.

The sample is large enough to investigate less common psychiatric disorders and outcomes, includes a large subsample of females, has sufficient racial/ethnic diversity to identify health disparities, and allows researchers to assess changes in risky behavior (and associated risk and protective factors) as youth age from adolescence to young adulthood.

Baseline data are archived at ICPSR, with funding from the National Addiction and HIV Data Archive Program. Follow-up Waves 1-4 are being archived at the National Archive of Criminal Justice, with funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Author

• Linda A. Teplin, Northwestern University