Welcome to the Maryland adolescent development in context study!
The MADICS study originated at The University of Colorado in 1991 and was administered jointly between The University of Colorado and The University of Michigan until it moved permanently and completely to The University of Michigan in 1998. If you have any comments, suggestions or observations about the study, please e-mail us at familysurveystudy@umich.edu. MADICS was known to participants as the Family Survey Study or Prince George's County Family Study. If you have been a participant in the study, we would love to hear from you!
Overview of Madics
The main purpose of this longitudinal study was to study the influence of context on individual behavior and to examine successful pathways through adolescence. We sought to describe and understand the influences of social context on the psychological determinants of behavioral choices and to illustrate developmental trajectories from middle childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood. Moreover, MADICS was one of the first intensive, longitudinal studies of normative development among Black adolescents in this country.
The sample of 1,482 families with adolescent children is unique in that it includes a large proportion (61%) of African-American families and a broad range of socio-economic status among both African-American and European-American families. The sample is drawn from a county with several different ecological settings including rural, low income, and high risk urban neighborhoods. Data collection began in Fall 1991 as the adolescents entered middle school. Four waves of data were collected from the adolescents, parents (both primary and secondary care givers), older siblings, school records, and the 1990 census data banks via in-home and telephone interviews and self-administered questionnaires while the youth were in middle and high school. Two additional waves took place after the youth had finished high school when they were one year and three years out. These were self-administered questionnaires and were filled out only by the youth.
MADICS includes extensive measures on multiple contexts of development - ranging from the family to the peer group, the neighborhood, and the school. In addition, we have been very careful to include measures of parallel constructs in each of these contexts, thus providing much better information on which to compare the influence of these various contexts on development.
The sample of 1,482 families with adolescent children is unique in that it includes a large proportion (61%) of African-American families and a broad range of socio-economic status among both African-American and European-American families. The sample is drawn from a county with several different ecological settings including rural, low income, and high risk urban neighborhoods. Data collection began in Fall 1991 as the adolescents entered middle school. Four waves of data were collected from the adolescents, parents (both primary and secondary care givers), older siblings, school records, and the 1990 census data banks via in-home and telephone interviews and self-administered questionnaires while the youth were in middle and high school. Two additional waves took place after the youth had finished high school when they were one year and three years out. These were self-administered questionnaires and were filled out only by the youth.
MADICS includes extensive measures on multiple contexts of development - ranging from the family to the peer group, the neighborhood, and the school. In addition, we have been very careful to include measures of parallel constructs in each of these contexts, thus providing much better information on which to compare the influence of these various contexts on development.