Monitoring the Future

DEFINITION: Monitoring the Future, also called the National High School Senior Survey, is an annual study that tracks the attitudes of secondary school students, college students, and young adults in the United States about drug and alcohol use and abuse.

Background

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is conducted by researchers at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Funded by competitive federal research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse since its beginnings in 1975, the study reports annual national data collected on eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students from across the United States. Each year, the reports are based on responses from over 25,000 students across more than 200 schools, though this varies, with up to 50,000 participants.

Originally, only senior-level classes were surveyed, and in its early years, MTF surveyed an average of 16,000 students annually across approximately 133 public and private high schools. Surveys started with randomly selected samples from each senior-level class, with participants resurveyed biannually. In 1991, similar survey samples of eighth and tenth graders were conducted in efforts to catch potential dropouts while they were still in school.

On average, the eighth-grade samples include about 18,000 students across about 150 schools annually, and the tenth-grade samples include about 17,000 students across about 140 schools annually. Although the first surveys were given at schools, after graduation, respondents received a mailed questionnaire at their place of residence. This mailed survey format was used until 2018, when the panel study began phasing in an online version of the survey. By the mid-2020s, virtually all panel surveys were collected online.

Data from students is collected during the spring, with a multistage random-sampling procedure used to guarantee a representative sample for each of the three grade levels. Randomness is exercised at three levels: geographic area, schools within the chosen areas (with probability proportional to size), and classes within each chosen school, with up to 350 students per school eligible for inclusion. The design allows for tracking four kinds of change: change reflected over time (period effects); change based on age (age effects); differences among peers through the life cycle (cohort effects); and differences based on environments, such as high school, college, workplace, or familial home, and on associated role transitions, such as marriage or parenthood (environmental effects). Students are surveyed on various attitudes, and a follow-up survey is conducted with some students into adulthood. By 2025, the panel study had collected data on over 120,000 adult participants who were first surveyed in school.

Among the phenomena tracked by MTF is substance abuse (of both licit and illicit drugs and alcohol). Surveys track initiation, habitual use, and cessation. Also surveyed are attitudes toward drugs in general, perceived availability, attitudes toward peer pressure, and perceived norms. By tracking cohort-sequential longitudinal data on drug abuse, MTF measures three figures: developmental (changes over the years), periodic (historical), and cohort (peer norms). Reports for each category are based on a diverse set of determinants. For example, the 2021 study found that marijuana and hallucinogen use among young adults aged nineteen to thirty reached their highest levels since data on these drugs was first recorded in 1988. Marijuana and hallucinogen use remained at historic highs through 2023. About 43 percent of young adults said they had used marijuana in the past year, up from 29 percent in 2011. About 8 percent reported hallucinogen use in the past year, up from 3 percent in 2011. The number of young adults who reported high-intensity drinking—defined by ten or more drinks in a row during a two-week period—hit 13 percent in 2021, the highest level since it hit 11 percent in 2005. However, alcohol use as a whole declined in 2021, with 66 percent reporting drinking in the past month, down from 70 percent in 2016. This decrease in alcohol use continued through 2023, with 27 percent of young adults reporting binge drinking in the past two weeks and 3.6 percent of young adults reporting daily alcohol use—both statistics were the lowest level the study ever recorded. In general, a downward trend in alcohol use began in the mid-2010s and continued into the mid-2020s. Nonmedical use of prescription drugs and cigarette smoking also reached all-time lows.

Published as full text on the MTF website and in print through the National Institute on Drug Abuse, MTF reports have been used in many ways. For example, the reports helped to correlate data that tracks phenomena such as whether employment affects drug abuse and delinquency, helped to examine self-reported rationale for substance abuse among high school seniors from 1976 through 2005, and helped to examine the relationship between sports participation and steroid use among Black and White American high school boys from 1991 through 2007 (to determine the effects of that time period’s Major League Baseball steroid-use scandal). Reports have also been used to track differences in usage patterns based on student ethnicity and the role of school sports.

MTF data has been used in articles in diverse scholarly journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, Education Week, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Criminology, the Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse, the American Journal of Health Studies, Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly, Substance Use and Misuse, Addiction, and the Journal of Drug Issues.

Surveys similar to MTF include the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (formerly the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse), conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Office of Applied Studies.

Mission and Goals

The mission of the MTF project is to produce longitudinal data that allows for studying changes in the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of youth in the United States. Specifically, the goal of MTF is to track changes in public opinion toward government and politics, alcohol and other drug use, gender roles, and the environment by surveying youth over time. A major MTF objective is to make this data useful to policymakers at all levels of government and to scholars in various disciplines.

Bibliography

"About MTF." Monitoring the Future, monitoringthefuture.org/about. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Bachman, J. G., et al. The Education-Drug Use Connection: How Successes and Failures in School Relate to Adolescent Smoking, Drinking, Drug Use, and Delinquency. Mahwah, Erlbaum, 2008.

Bachman, J. G., et al. “Racial/Ethnic Differences in the Relationship between Parental Education and Substance Use among US 8^th, 10^th, and 12^th Grade Students: Findings from the Monitoring the Future Project.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, vol. 72, no. 2, 2011, pp. 279–85.

"Cannabis and Hallucinogen Use among Adults Remained at Historic Highs in 2023." National Institute on Drug Abuse, 29 Aug. 2024, nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2024/08/cannabis-and-hallucinogen-use-among-adults-remained-at-historic-highs-in-2023. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Johnston, Lloyd, et al. “National Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the Future Study, 1975–1995.” National Institute on Drug Abuse, University of Michigan, 1997, monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/mtf-vol2_1995.pdf. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

"Marijuana and Hallucinogen Use among Young Adults Reached All Time-High in 2021." National Institute on Drug Abuse, 22 Aug. 2022, www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/marijuana-hallucinogen-use-among-young-adults-reached-all-time-high-2021. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Miech, Richard A., et al. "National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975–2024: Overview and Detailed Results for Secondary School Students." National Institute on Drug Abuse, University of Michigan, 2025, monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/mtf2025.pdf. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Patrick, Megan E., et al. "Monitoring the Future Panel Study Annual Report: National Data on Substance Use among Adults Ages 19 to 65, 1976-2023. Monitoring the Future Monograph Series." Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 2024, monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/mtfpanel2024.pdf. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.