Northwestern Juvenile Project: Archiving Data, Part I

The Northwestern Juvenile Project (NJP) is the first large-scale, longitudinal study of alcohol, drug, and mental health service needs and outcomes of youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The overall sample of 1829 youth is racially/ethnically diverse and includes 1172 males and 657 females, 10 to 18 years of age at baseline, who were arrested and detained between 1995 and 1998 in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois. Since 1995, participants have been tracked and re-interviewed, whether they are back in the communities or (re)incarcerated, resulting in a longitudinal data set spanning over 15 years. This application proposes to archive data from the NJP to make them available to a larger community of researchers. Data from the baseline interview were recently deposited to the National Addiction and HIV Data Archive Program at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. This application proposes to prepare and deposit interview data from the first follow-up interview, 3 years after baseline, to the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD). We also propose to make any necessary adaptations to the baseline data deposit to allow NACJD to disseminate the baseline interview data as well.