National Youth Study participants were chosen randomly to resemble the population of American youth as closely as possible. Although we are unable to interview all American teenagers, if we choose our study participants in a way that all youth within our targeted age range have an equal chance of being selected, we can make statements about American youth as a whole. To test whether we were successful in conducting a random survey of American youth, we compare the NYS participants to national statistical data for the year that the original phone survey was completed. As can be seen in the charts below, the characteristics of the NYS participants are very close to those of the national population.

Gender

The following table shows that half of the NYS participants are female and half are male. This compares very closely with the gender distribution of the national population of 13-17 year old youth in the year the Wave 1 survey was conducted.

	NYS Participants	2002 ACS, Ages 13-17*
Male	50%	51%
Female	50%	49%

Regional Distribution

When we compare the geographic distribution of the NYS participants to national population estimates, they match very closely.

Region	NYS Region Distribution	2002 ACS, Ages 13-17*
Northeast	15%	17%
Midwest	23%	22%
South	42%	37%
West	20%	24%