To locate possible causes for the gender and race differences observed in adolescent health status, an analysis was made of the relationship between the scores of a national sample of 12- to 17-year-old adolescents on selected items of the National Center for Health Statistics' Health Examination Survey. Thirty survey items indicating social support given to or received by an adolescent and nine items representing feelings of self-esteem were organized into seven separate scales and entered into a multiple regression analysis as independent variables. The six categories of support were infrastructure support (including details of the subject's residential area, birth order, family structure, and so on), and school, home behavior, home attitude, peer, and community supports. The self-esteem scale consisted of items requiring the subject to evaluate some personal characteristic or to estimate future accomplishments. A measure of health status, similarly constructed from items in the data set, was regarded as the dependent variable. Findings of the analysis are reported for the total survey population, as well as for race categories, gender groups, and race-gender groups. Results are discussed. (RH)