Using AHAA and Add Health to Predict Add Health WIII Outcomes

Because students from all cohorts have completed their high school course-taking by Wave III (with the exception of a small number of students who were in high school for longer than four years), predicting Wave III outcomes with AHAA data involves a less complex process than required for other types of analyses. For this type of analysis, analysts may elect to use subjects’ Wave I Survey data or the AHAA data that corresponds to Wave I. Researchers can also use the cumulative, end of high school, AHAA measures. Researchers should pay attention to how long subjects were out of high school when Wave III was conducted (6 years for the Wave I 12th grade cohort vs. 1 year for the 7th grade cohort) and how far along subjects were in their high school years when the Wave I survey occurred (for the 9th grade cohort it was the beginning of high school whereas for the 11th grade cohort it was nearer the end) when designing their analyses.

Figure A: Conceptual Model for Predicting Add Health WIII Outcomes