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PRB Research - Adolescent Behavior
Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC)
The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) project, a World Health Organization cross-national study, is a unique quadrennial research study of adolescent health, health behaviors, and the family, school, and social-environmental contexts for these health behaviors. The international HBSC survey is conducted with national and regional samples of students ages 11, 13, and 15 years in more than 40 countries.
The HBSC survey instrument is an international standard questionnaire used by all participating countries. Researchers in the United States administered the instrument in 1997-1998, 2001-2002, 2005-2006, and 2009-2010. The NICHD project includes an extended national instrument, which includes a larger national sample of youth in grades 6 through 10, and an over-sampling of minority youth to permit more accurate population estimates.
The goal of the HBSC survey is to obtain data about adolescent health behavior and to make this information available so as to enable the improvement of health services and programs for youth. The international standard questionnaire facilitates the collection of common data across all participating countries and, thus, enables the quantification of patterns of key health behaviors, health indicators, and contextual variables. These data allow cross-national comparisons and, with successive surveys, trend analyses at both the national and cross-national level.
The HBSC 2005-2006 Survey: School Report (PDF - 1.66 MB) is available.
Principal investigator
Ronald Iannotti, Ph.D.
DESPR Collaborators
- Bruce Simons-Morton, Ed.D., M.P.H.
- Denise Haynie, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- Leah Lipsky, Ph.D., M.H.S.
- Ashley Russell, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- Kaigang Li, Ph.D., M.Ed.