Add Health was developed in response to a mandate from the United States Congress to fund a study of adolescent health and was designed by a nationwide team of multidisciplinary investigators from the social, behavioral, and health sciences. The original purpose of Add Health was to understand the causes of adolescent health and health behavior with special emphasis on the forces that reside in the multiple contexts of adolescent life. Innovative features of the research design facilitated this purpose by providing independent measurements of the social environments of adolescents, including contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships. Data were gathered from adolescents themselves, their parents, siblings, friends, romantic partners, fellow students, and school administrators. Existing databases with information about the neighborhoods and communities of the adolescents were merged with the Add Health data.
