Retention

The Number of Young Adult Interviews

Table 2 extends this interview repetition concept to the young adult component of the survey. Since the young adult interview has been ongoing only since 1994, the maximum number of young adult interviews possible by 2020 is fourteen. It should be recalled that young adults age 21 or over at the date of the 1998 interview were not interviewed in that year. This leads to a potential four-year interview gap, between 1996 and 2000, for these cases. Similarly, those who were not fielded in 2000, as part of the children aged 0 to 20 of 38% of minority oversample mothers not eligible in that round, have a four-year gap from 1998 to 2002 and will have missed either their last child round or a young adult round. From 2002 to 2008, the young adult sample includes all youth age 15 and over who were available to be interviewed. Beginning in 2010, Young Adult respondents over the age of 30 will be interviewed every four years. The interviewed sample is selected by age as of December 31 of the survey year, so that approximately half of the older young adults are eligible each round. Since 2010, young adults age 31-32, 35-36, 39-40, 43-44, etc. as of December 31 of the survey year have not been fielded. In Table 2, while the age references the end of 2020, a particular young adult may not have been interviewed in that year. Of the 8673 young adults included in Table 2, 5670 were fielded and 4354 were interviewed in 2020. Table 2 also shows that there are substantial numbers of young adults who have had at least nine young adult interview points and a large number who have had eight interviews as young adults since 1994. Among young adults who have completed eight or more young adult interviews, more than 77% have completed every interview for which they were  eligible.

Young Adult Assessment History. As can be seen in Table 2, most of the young adults have had a number of child assessment points prior to reaching age 15 and then, depending on their current age, between one and eleven Young Adult interviews since that date. The nature of the data collection changes in fundamental ways when a child transitions to being a young adult. Prior to 2016, children under age 15 were administered (or their mother completed) a variety of assessments. For children in this age range, the mother also provided a variety of information about the child's health, education, and selected other items. Beginning with the 1988 survey, children age ten and over self-administered a set of questions about their own behaviors and attitudes in a variety of domains, including education, family and peer interaction, normative and non-normative attitudes and behaviors. In 2016, no children were directly assessed, and mothers completed Mother Supplements for children ages 0 to 13. In 2018, only a small number of child health and schooling questions were asked of the mothers.

Starting in 1994, once the children reached 15, they completed the Young Adult interview designed to address most of the major dimensions of their lives: schooling, employment, family, peer interactions and issues of sexuality, and other behaviors and attitudes that permit researchers to examine in context the experiences of these young adults in a holistic manner. Beginning in 2016, children ages 12 and up were included in the YA fielding, although the children age 12 and 13 answered significantly fewer questions than those 14 and older. A flow diagram that would cross the possible survey points, encompassing the period from 1986 to the present, would follow a child from preadolescent years, describing the child development process in some detail, parallel family and child behaviors and attitudes, and culminate in a detailed profile of later adolescent-early adult transitions to adulthood. Table 1 and Table 2 are designed to clarify the size of the sample that permits one to maximize the panel dimensions of the data set.

Table 2. Age of All Young Adults as of December 31^st, 2018 by YA, Child, and Total Number of Interviews