Projects: KSAH

The Korean Study of Adolescent Health (KSAH) is a cohort-based longitudinal study that integrates sociogenomic data, repeated neuroimaging, and sociocentric peer-network measures with repeated assessments of adolescent mental health and related psychosocial characteristics. KSAH is designed as a multi-level research infrastructure that supports longitudinal analyses of how genetic predispositions, neurodevelopmental processes, and dynamic peer relationships jointly shape a broad range of outcomes, including subjective well-being, perceived stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms, sleep and eating-related problems, and other domains of adolescent adjustment.

KSAH comprises two primary cohorts (Cohort 22 and Cohort 23) recruited from a single-sex girls’ high school, with repeated survey waves conducted during the high-school period and planned follow-up into emerging adulthood. Baseline data collection is implemented in the school setting, complemented by face-to-face interviews and mobile-based follow-up surveys. Genomic DNA is collected via an in-person protocol. The survey instrument covers not only mental health but also family and educational contexts, validated psychological scales, and a wide range of psychosocial attitudes and beliefs.

To characterize adolescents’ social environments, KSAH employs a discussion-network name generator (up to seven alters) that records real names and in-school identifiers (e.g., grade/class), enabling the reconstruction of grade-level sociocentric networks and the analysis of network change over time. These social-network data are paired with repeated MRI sessions that include structural imaging (e.g., T1-weighted and diffusion imaging) and functional imaging (resting-state and multiple task paradigms, including face-viewing and naturalistic movie-watching). Together, these modalities provide an integrated platform for investigating how peer social structure and social-cognitive processes are instantiated in the brain and how they relate to trajectories of mental health across adolescence.