The Adolescent Necessities Index: A brief, self‐report measure of the material and social conditions necessary for adolescent thriving

Healthy development depends on adequate material and social resources, but measures of these affordances are often limited or absent from psychological research. Conventional measures of socioeconomic status, such as household income or parental education, are difficult for adolescents to accurately report and are distal proxies for the resources that directly impact functioning (e.g., nutrition, safety). As a more proximal measure of environmental affordances, we developed the Adolescent Necessities Index (ANI), a 10-item adolescent-report measure. In Study 1, a prospective longitudinal sample of N = 6057 U.S. adolescents, we demonstrate the ANI's convergent, discriminant, and incremental predictive validity for objectively measured report card grades and subjectively reported well-being, as well as measurement invariance across demographic subgroups (e.g., gender, race, and ethnicity). In Study 2, a cross-sectional study in a nationally representative sample of N = 1859 U.S. adolescents, we replicate evidence of incremental predictive validity, demonstrate consensual validity with a parent-report version of the ANI, and establish national norms. The ANI provides a new tool for efficiently capturing adolescents' access to necessities in the modern U.S.