Youth Attitudes and Military Service: Findings from Two Decades of Monitoring the Future National Samples of American Youth

This document is primarily a statistical sourcebook, intended to serve the needs of researchers and others interested in youth in the United States, especially youth plans and attitudes related to military service. The findings presented here have been compiled from Monitoring the Future A Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of Youth, an ongoing series of large-scale nationally representative surveys of secondary school students. Although most analyses of Monitoring the Future MTF data have focused on drug use and related factors, the study content is much broader as the title implies and includes vocational and educational plans and aspirations, attitudes about many social institutions, and a variety of background factors. The present document makes use of a limited subset of the MTF measures, items deemed particularly relevant to military enlistment.