Linking Indicators
Wave III Education Data Users’ Guides

Due to the multi-cohort design of Add Health, students’ high school careers overlap differently with the Add Health survey years. The Linking indicators are designed to help analysts link student transcript data to academic or school course-taking years and to the Add Health surveys. Two types of Linking indicators were constructed, school-year and grade-level indicators. These indicators allow analysts to discern when each student was in high school, the duration of each student’s high school career, what grade level each student was in during the first Add Health survey year, and each student’s transcript-indicated grade level when high school course-taking began. Thus, these indicators are important for analysts interested in using the Academic Courses, Academic Networks, and Curriculum component indicators in conjunction with Add Health survey data.

Users’ Guides and Associated Data Files

Linking Component, 2007
edu1: This data file contains school-year and grade-level indicators; all students with transcript data are included in this data file.

Using the AHAA data requires attention to the temporal order of survey administration relative to the academic year of a course on the transcript. See AHAA & Add Health for further information on employing the linking indicators to match Add Health respondents’ Wave I survey data to their transcript-determined academic year placement (i.e. Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4).