Things Your Friends Have Done

The 16 items of Things Your Friends Have Done tap domains of delinquent behavior and illicit drug use. (Elliott, D.S., Huizinga, D., & Ageton, S.S., 1985).

Abstract: The Things Your Friends Have Done (TFD) interview was first administered in Year 5. The 16 items tap domains of delinquent behavior and illicit drug use. It was administered as part of the child interview which is administered in the home setting during the summer. For each item, the child is asked to give a yes/no answer. The measure was scored based on a conceptual scoring system reflecting the behavioral domains of interest to the investigators, and was divided into four scales; delinquency, alcohol use, tobacco use, and other drug use (marijuana, heroin, crack, cocaine, LSD, or sniffing the fumes of harmful substances). Note that all four scales are skewed (see Technical Report dated July, 1997). The Del scale can be transformed using a square-root transformation to reduce the skew values, but a square-root transformation was not successful for the Oth scale. The single-item scales of Alc and Tob can not be meaningfully transformed, so these three scales (Oth, Alc, and Tob) may be recoded into dichotomous variables (0=absent, 1=present). Thus ordinary least squares regression can be used for the recoded Del scale, whereas logistic regression is required for the Oth, Alc, and Tob scales.

Who Completed this Measure?: select one

Cohort 1 - Administrative History

  • Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
  • Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11

Cohort 2 - Administrative History

  • Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
  • Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11

Cohort 3 - Administrative History

  • Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
  • Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11

Technical Reports:

Raw Dataset Name: CyN

Scored Dataset Name: TFDySCc

Keywords:
Alcohol, Drugs, Gangs, Illegal Activity, Physical Aggression, Smoking, Substance Abuse, Theft, Tobacco, Vandalism

Is this Measure Available for Public Use?: No

Obtain Measure:

Delbert S. Elliott
Director
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado
483 UCB
1440 15th Street
Boulder, CO 80302
Tel: (303) 492-1032
Direct: (303) 735-2146
Email: delbert.elliott@colorado.edu