Add Health Study: Adolescent Substance Use and Adult Cardiovascular Disease Risk

A secondary analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) dataset, comprising 4,128 participants. The data links self-reported adolescent substance use (binge drinking, marijuana use, cigarette smoking) to 30-year Framingham cardiovascular disease risk scores in adulthood. The dataset was published by Prince Nii Ossah Addo on figshare in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Train predictive models for adult cardiovascular disease risk based on patterns of adolescent substance use.
• Analyze dose-response relationships between the number of substances used in adolescence and future health outcomes.
• Study the association between specific substance use combinations (e.g., smoking and binge drinking) and long-term cardiometabolic risk.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the nationally representative Add Health longitudinal study.
• Analysis includes a specific sample size of 4,128 participants with an average baseline age of 15 years.
• Findings report specific odds ratios (e.g., 2.68 times higher odds for three substances) with 95% confidence intervals.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the underlying data tables is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The provided file is a 16.4 KB DOCX document, suggesting the dataset is a summary table rather than raw data.

Provenance

Source

National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), Waves I and IV.

Collection Method

Secondary analysis using survey procedures in SAS, accounting for multistage sampling design.

Time Range

Longitudinal, from adolescence to adulthood (specific years not provided).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-15 05:46:52; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States.