NC Life Study

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What was unique about the CONTEXT study sample?

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Dr. Susan Ennett: It was a rural sample of kids and that's pretty unusual in the adolescent literature. It's not completely unusual, but there is far more research on kids from urban settings. Also, it was unique because it was a diverse population of kids. So we had just a little more than half of the kids were White, a pretty substantial percent like 37 percent were African-American. Some Latino youth. At the time that the study started in 2002, the Latino population was just beginning to grow in North Carolina, and we saw that particularly in one county. So I think we had about 7 percent Hispanic, and of course, it's greatly grown since. Then a residual of kids who were of other race/ethnicities. So that rural nature of the sample, the ability to be able to in particular look and compare differences in similarities in those developmental pathways of risk behaviors between black and white youth was a major thing.