Monitoring the Future youth study receives $33M grant

The National Institutes of Health is awarding the Institute for Social Research a $33 million grant to extend the landmark Monitoring the Future study for five years.

For the past 33 years, U-M scientists have tracked changes in the behaviors, attitudes and plans of young Americans as part of the study, which annually surveys some 50,000 young people in the nation's secondary schools and then conducts follow-up surveys of a sample of them for several decades after they graduate. Next year the oldest respondents will reach age 50.

"Such long-term data on nationally representative samples of the population are extremely rare and very useful for looking at developmental change across the life course," says Lloyd Johnston, the study's principal investigator.

The annual surveys address tobacco, alcohol and drug use but also cover a wide range of other issues for young Americans including continuing education, work, marriage, parenthood and participation in other social institutions. More than 1 million people have been surveyed so far.

Monitoring the Future is widely cited as the most authoritative source of information on adolescent drug use in the country. It receives its funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health, and is led by four ISR research professors — Johnston, Jerald Bachman, Patrick O'Malley and John Schulenberg — all social or developmental psychologists.

Because investigators initiated the study, they must submit peer-reviewed grant proposals every five years to continue this work. This week's award is the latest in a series of grants that have sustained MTF without interruption for the past 33 years. Now moving into its 38th year, total funding since the study's inception exceeds $120 million.

"We are particularly pleased that a jury of our scientific peers and the sponsoring agency believe that this study is sufficiently valuable to the nation that they are willing to allocate the substantial resources needed to continue it," Johnston says.

More than a decade ago, working with the Council of Europe, Johnston helped to give rise to a series of coordinated studies in Europe similar to Monitoring the Future; nearly 40 countries now participate. Similar national surveys also have been conducted in Japan and other countries in Asia and Latin America, allowing the situation in the United States to be compared with conditions in other countries.

For more on Monitoring the Future, go to www.monitoringthefuture.org.

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