Monitoring the Future: Questionnaire Responses from the Nation’s High School Seniors, 1980

This report presents descriptive statistical results from a 1980 national survey of high school seniors concerning their values, behaviors, and lifestyle. It is the sixth in a series. Questionnaires were filled out by 16,524 seniors in 107 public and 20 private high schools. Student response rate was 82%. Content areas measured include the following: drugs; education; work and leisure; sex roles and family; family plans and population concerns; conservation, materialism, equity; religion; politics; social change; social problems; major social institutions; military; interpersonal relationships; race relations; concern for others; happiness; other personality variables; background and school; and deviant behavior and victimization. The “Introductory Section” to the report contains a description of the study including its purposes, major content areas, design, field procedures, response rates, and methods of publication and data dissemination. In the “Descriptive Results Section” of the report all questions contained in the survey are presented along with percentagized frequency distributions of answers for the entire sample and for selected subgroups. A “Cross-Time Index of Questionnaire Items” is included to help users locate items dealing with a subject area of interest and to help them determine in which other years an item was used (similar national surveys have been conducted since 1975). Included in the appendices are sampling error estimates and tables, procedures used to derive design effects and sampling errors and, covers, instructions, and a sample page from the questionnaires. (Author/RM)