Teenage trends and attitudes

Several different agencies and organizations track the prevalence of Ecstasy use in our country. Though Ecstasy has a relatively short 

The primary source of information and statistics on teen Ecstasy use is the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each year, the department conducts three major surveys and uses that statistical data to aid in setting U.S. national drug policy and also in determining how best to devote financial resources in order to target areas of greatest need. The first. Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey, is conducted by the University of 

Another United States HHS survey, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, and is also an in-school survey that collects data from students in grades 9-12. YRBS began in 1990 and has been conducted twice-yearly since 1991. The results of the YRBS are difficult to interpret strictly in terms of Ecstasy use, however, because they only ask questions regarding illicit 

Another important survey conducted by the United States HHS is the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). This survey is conducted in the homes of teens, rather than in school. Currently, the NHSDA survey is taken via a computer survey for drug-related questions. Though there are some inherent limitations in its methodology, as compared to the MTF survey and others not conducted in-home where teens might be timid to reply truthfully, NHSDA is considered to be a very reliable study and its results highly representative of actual drug use. The NHSDA was conducted periodically from 1971 and annually since 1990. 

It is interesting to note that, although the methodologies of these surveys all differ in regard to design, implementation, documentation, and scope, and are therefore impossible to directly compare to one another, their respective results nonetheless do seem to be relatively consistent with each other. Furthermore, the United States HHS has studied the methodology of all of these studies in-depth and has found them all to be of very high quality. 

---