Homeless History Form

Instrument name: Homeless History Form

To obtain the instrument:

Bruce Link, PhD Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University 722 West 168th Street, Rm. 1609 NYC, NY 10032 email: bgl1@columbia.edu

Citation: Link B, Phelan J, Bresnahan M, Stueve A, Moore R, Susser E. Lifetime and Five-year Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States: New Evidence on an Old Debate.  American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1995; 65:347-354. Click here for text

Purpose: An estimate of the annual prevalence of homelessness among youths, derived from a nationally representative household survey among youths aged 12 to 17.

Population: Homeless adolescents

Publication date(s): 1995

Domain: Housing status & housing history

Administration: Structured interview

Reliability and validity information: The method produced estimates of life-time and five-year prevalence that were very close to estimates from a less comprehensive measure administered to the same subjects four years earlier.  Evidence of construct validity for distinctions between literal homelessness and doubling up existed in associations between this distinction and exposure to deprivations (no toilet, not enough food, no place to bath) and victimization (being robbed, attacked or raped).

Item description/response options: Housing status is assessed using one multi-part question with dichotomous response options. Homeless history is assessed for any experience with homelessness over the lifetime and any experience in the past 12 months using 12 questions with dichotomous response options.

Description of the original study: Personal, audiotaped interviews were conducted in 1992 and 1993 with a representative household sample of 6496 adolescents aged 12 to 17 as part of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Respondents reported whether they had spent the night in any of a variety of locations other than home during the previous 12 months.