Add Health became a pioneering study in data sharing by establishing a data dissemination plan that (1) stipulated that project investigators had no proprietary period for analysis prior to data release - the scientific community was given access to the data at the same time as project investigators; (2) established a data security plan at the time of proposal submission to NIH; and (3) developed data sharing guidelines, policies, and procedures before the data were ready for dissemination. Add Health data sets have been distributed to researchers around the world since the release of Wave I data in 1997 and currently there are over 10,000 Add Health researchers using the released data.
