Healthy Youth Survey
Project Members
* Principal and Co-Investigators: Gordon Barnes, Ph.D. (Child & Youth Care); Cecilia Benoit, Ph.D. (Sociology), Bonnie Leadbeater, Ph.D. (Psychology); Tim Stockwell, Ph.D. (Psychology); Mikael Jansson, Ph.D. (Sociology)
* Community Partners and Survey Team Associates: Wayne Mitic, Ed.D., BC Office for Children & Youth; Richard Stanwick, M.D., Chief Medical Health Officer, Vancouver Island Health Authority; Mandeep Dhami, Ph.D. (Psychology); Tracey Russell, Ministry of Children and Family Development
* Research Coordinator: Leah Shumka
* Research Assistants: Kristina Bittermann, Melanie Friebel, Caitlin Janzen, Anna Kucharsky, Jessica Leavens, Adrienne Treloar, Jennifer Zadorozniak
Click here to download M.K. Nixon, P. Cloutier, and M. Jansson's article entitled "Nonsuicidal self-harm in youth: a population-based survey" published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in January, 2008.
Project Update
The Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) provided two very important functions for the CAHR projects. First, this two-wave random sample of youth in Greater Victoria investigated models of health for youth in contemporary Canadian society, by looking at these factors:
• Health resources of youth
o individual health promoting behaviours
o family strengths
o community/social capital
• Health risks of youth
o individual health compromising behaviours
o family stresses
o community/social adversities
Second, and very importantly, the HYS provided the foundation against which many other populations in the CAHR research projects can be compared. Common questions link the health survey data with some of the target CAHR project's data collection. For example, we are able to compare the health of youth in adoptive and biological children in the longitudinal Vancouver Families Study, street-involved youth, and in Cheanuxw Youth in the Beecher Bay project, with findings for the community-wide sample of youth who participated in the healthy youth survey.
“The Healthy Youth Survey is a powerful study of the behaviour we were interested in” says Mikael Jansson, Ph.D., Co-Investigator of the HYS. “In the Healthy Youth Survey we learn about change between the two interviews, and that is the strength of this study. Second, relatively few opportunities exist to make multi-dimensional comparisons between the health of a population sample to small sub-populations of other youth from the same area.”
The HYS team members benefited from experts in public health, demographic and epidemiological surveys, including:
• Nancy Galambos, Ph.D. (Sociology)
• Mikael Jansson, Ph.D. (Sociology)
• Cecilia Benoit, Ph.D. (Sociology)
• Bonnie Leadbeater, Ph.D. (Psychology)
• Richard Stanwick, M.D. (Medical Health Officer, Vancouver Island Health Authority)
• Gordon Barnes, Ph.D. (Child and Youth Care)
• Wayne Mitic, Ed.D. (BC Office for Children & Youth)
• Mandeep Dhami, Ph.D. (Psychology)
• Tracey Russell (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Based on prior research in resilience and health promotion, the HYS team designed the survey questions to investigate the assets and resources of youth, their families and their communities, as well as individual, family and community or cultural risks for injury. These factors included:
• interpersonal competence
• motivation to learn
• family factors (stable incomes and housing, positive parent communication and involvement in learning)
• community factors (non-parent mentors, caring neighbours, shared values and norms, stable social membership, and wide participation in social life)
The team also included questions on risks and adversities:
• individual risks (early interpersonal or behavioural problems)
• family limitations (poverty, conflict, and unsupervised out-of-school time)
• community stresses (social and economic changes that effect access to education and labour markets)
• social policies to combat economic and ethnic polarization.
The survey was administered in the second and fourth year of the CAHR research program. The team randomly telephoned 9,500 households and in total, they interviewed 664 youth. After attaining the consent of both the parents (or guardian) and youth, they conducted face-to-face, closed-ended interviews with the youth in their own homes or other private setting. Adolescents received an honorarium of $25 for completing the survey. Wave two of the survey was administered to 580 youth (87%) who agreed to be interviewed again.
Gordon Barnes, Ph.D., was awarded funding through a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) partnership and this wave of data collection was completed in the spring of 2007 with the youth who were then aged 16 through 22 years old, and 540 (81%) youth participated. At the time of this newsletter printing, full-scale analysis of the three waves of data is taking place.
Our inter-disciplinary team of researchers is now using these data to learn more about the transition to young adulthood in general by:
• describing more fully the characteristics of the heterogenous population of vulnerable BC youth, aged 18 to 25, who are succeeding or failing to make healthy adult transitions to post-secondary education or training, work, and stable supportive personal relationships
• increasing knowledge of the developmental pathways that increase the risks and resilience of marginalized youth transitioning to adulthood.
We are also conducting research that will add to knowledge about specific health problems in youth in this age group, including:
• intentional and unintentional injuries
• sports injuries
• self-injurious behaviours
• dating violence
• poly-substance abuse
• self-injurious behaviours
• mental health concerns
