Editor's note: This article is part of an occasional series reporting the findings of a Search Institute survey of area youth, as well as interpretation and response.
NEW ULM -While 70 percent of Brown County youth feel family provides a high level of support, only 28 percent think they communicate positively with parents, according to a Search Institute survey of Brown County youth conducted last October.
The survey results have been communicated to the public and some schools in a series of January and February events.
More than 1,300 youth in grades seven, eight, ten and 11 were surveyed. The survey was administered in all schools in Brown County.
Only 31 percent of young people in the county think that school provides a caring, encouraging environment, and only 25 percent of youth feel adults in the community value youth, the survey also found. Only 36 percent feel parents are actively involved in helping a young person succeed in school.
These findings - pointing in roughly the same direction - come across as "really interesting," to Mike Brigger, Executive Director of Healthy Communities Healthy Youth (HCHY), the group that sponsored the survey.
What he sees as most obvious is the perceived lack of communication between youth and adults.
"It's like seeing the two sides of a coin," Brigger says.
"Youth feel they have family support, but, on the flip side, they don't feel that they can positively communicate with the adults in their lives."
"They are almost crying out to us, 'I need you to listen, I need you to hear.'
"It's one thing to listen, and another to actually hear, youth."
At the same time, Brigger is encouraged by many of the findings.
"Not everything is bad news," he says.
Specifically, in addition to feeling supported by family, 72 percent of the students are actively engaged in learning, 70 percent are motivated to do well in school, and 66 percent care about their school.
Seventy-five percent are optimistic about their personal future.
Several of these percentages represent a meaningful increase of 5 percent or more from the previous such survey (administered in 1999), Brigger notes.
Other ideas gleaned from the survey:
Social competencies, positive identity:
Risky behaviors, to Brigger, represent an area of concern.
"It struck me that when it comes to drugs, alcohol and sexual activity, only about half of the youth felt they could restrain," he said.
"Only 40 percent feel they can resist negative peer pressure and dangerous situations."
In addition, only 28 percent of the young people know how to plan ahead and make choices. As youth grow older, this percentage goes consistently down - which is "distressing" to Brigger.
"These kids are in their mid-teens, some are a year away from graduation and moving on to the next stage of their lives - and they don't feel they have the planning and decision making tools," he says.
Only half of the youth reported high self-esteem.
Depression
"One other layer that stood out," said Brigger, is the number of youth who have actually attempted suicide - a whopping 12 percent.
Some 20 percent of all youth reported having been seriously depressed - to the point of considering suicide.
This percentage was even higher - some 25 percent - in the sub-group of students who reported possessing an "average" number of "assets" (indicators of well-being).
The average number of assets reported by youth was approximately 20, out of a possible total of 40 (see the Jan. 21 Journal for story on assets).
Furthermore, the reported depression rate for youth with nine or less assets was 45 percent.
"Those are scary numbers, really disturbing... They cannot be swept under the rug... Adults can longer pretend this doesn't happen," Brigger said.
Validity
Brigger discounted questions about the validity of what the youth report.
"The Search Institute has done this for so long," he says, "that they have a pretty good way of identifying invalid surveys (when youth are inconsistent, not really telling the truth, or trying to fool the survey)."
In the present case, only 1,205 out of 1,356 surveys were actually accepted and analyzed.
"I believe that most of the youth were indeed thinking and feeling what they said they were thinking and feeling," Brigger notes.
The point of the survey is to measure youth's perceptions, not necessarily objective facts.
The road ahead
Overall, sums up Brigger, the survey highlighted "a number of good things, a number of things that concern me, and a lot of areas to work on."
He and others are determined not to let the survey "sit in a drawer."
HCHY is planning several follow-up steps.
In addition to individual presentations of findings, a Youth Summit has been scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27, at the District Administrative Center Boardroom in New Ulm.
All interested youth are invited to attend.
Advance notice of the summit has been sent to many youth organizations and programs, and their members have been asked to identify the top five issues of concern in the survey.
Of these, organizers have picked out the top three. These issues - and what youth see as potential solutions - will be discussed in professionally moderated group sessions, and then the entire summit.
"We want to tell youth, 'we want to sit down and listen to you...," says Brigger.
"We want them to tell us why they think their peers answered [the survey questions] the way they did... We need to get a foothold... in beginning to address these issues."
The next "layers of programming," including speakers and other presentations, are in the works for this spring and fall.
Joint efforts are being explored with the countywide Underage Substance Abuse Coalition and other groups.
HCHY is sponsored by the United Way.