Over the years, Add Health Ancillary Studies have added a substantial amount of additional data for users, including contextual data on the communities and states in which participants reside, genomic data and a range of biological health markers of participants, and parental survey data. Past Ancillary Studies have added rich datasets to the Add Health archive that have been used by thousands of researchers and have greatly contributed to scientific knowledge.
An Ancillary Study is any study that derives support from independent funds outside the Add Health Study, and does one or more of the following:
- 1. Merges secondary data sources to Add Health respondent records that requires unique identifiers (e.g., geocodes) to perform these linkages.
- 2. Uses archived biospecimens collected by the Add Health Study to conduct new assays.
- 3. Adds new survey questionnaire or biological data to Add Health, either through making additions to the core instruments during a particular wave or through the use of unique identifiers to collect new survey or biological data.
Add Health has established a set of requirements for investigators seeking to add ancillary contextual, questionnaire, or biological data to Add Health, under the auspices of an Add Health Ancillary Study. Most simply, Ancillary Studies involve: 1) writing an ancillary study proposal to Add Health and getting that proposal reviewed and approved by Add Health, and 2) the understanding that investigators who conduct an Ancillary Study must cover all costs incurred by the study, such as selecting special samples; collecting, processing or shipping biospecimens; preparing and documenting analysis files; integrating ancillary data into the Add Health Study; and archiving excess biospecimens. An Ancillary Study must be reviewed and approved by Add Health before a grant is submitted for external funding.
Please note that the review of Add Health Ancillary Study proposals is both time-consuming (on the part of Add Health) and serious. We not only consider such reviews to be similar to those of an NIH Study Section (e.g., Five Dimensions of Scientific Merit), but we also give serious consideration to both Add Health priorities and policies and to the scientific priorities of our main funding agencies over the years, particularly the Division of Behavioral and Social Research of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Population Dynamics Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). For further information on our review of Ancillary Study Proposals, please see our document entitled “Researcher Guidelines for Ancillary Studies,” also available on this website.
Although Ancillary Study investigators are not required to have previous experience with the Add Health Study, demonstrated familiarity with Add Health data and study design will significantly enhance review of Ancillary Study proposals, within both Add Health and independent funding agencies.