The State of Connecticut’s Youth: Data, Outcomes and Indicators The State of Connecticut’s Youth 2003 Data, Outcomes and Indicators Priscilla F. Canny, PhD Michelle Beaulieu Cooke, MPH Connecticut Voices for Children Connecticut Voices for Children Page 1 The State of Connecticut’s Youth: Data, Outcomes and Indicators CONNECTICUT VOICES The authors would like to give special FOR CHILDREN thanks to: Valerie LaMotte, Connecticut Office of Policy and 33 Whitney Avenue Management New Haven, CT 06510 Deborah Stewart, The Consultation Center Phone: 203-498-4240 Connecticut for Community Youth Development* Fax: 203-498-4242 Email: [email protected] Erica Gelven, Connecticut Childhood Injury Prevention Center On the web at Janice Gruendel, Co-president Shelley Geballe, Co-president www.ctkidslink.org Amy Blankson, Youth Development Consultant Allyson Bregman, Policy Intern Bernadette Thomas, Policy Intern and all of the Connecticut Voices staff. Connecticut Voices for Children is a statewide, citizen-based research and policy organization This report was supported, in part, by grants from the dedicated to enhancing the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention health and well-being of the (OJJDP), Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of state's children, youth and their Justice to the State of Connecticut. families. Our programs include rigorous research and policy analysis, a strategic communications program, Last updated: August 17, 2003 advocacy partnerships with other organizations, a vibrant Young Policy Fellows internship program, and a close partnership with a lobbying *Connecticut for Community Youth Development (CCYD) is a statewide organization that works to effect capacity building project working to create an infrastructure of services, changes in law and policy in supports, and opportunities that promote the positive development of 12– to Connecticut. We collaborate 18-year-olds in Connecticut. CCYD is one of 13 state projects funded by the with communities, key federal Department of Health and Human Services/Family and Youth stakeholders, other nonprofits Services Bureau in 1998 for a five-year youth development demonstration and policymakers to ensure that project. Contact Valerie LaMotte ([email protected]), all children in our state grow up Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, or Deborah Stewart healthy, nurtured, safe and well- ([email protected]), The Consultation Center, for further educated.. information about the CCYD:Capacity Building Initiative (2003-2008) events, training courses, and funding opportunities. Connecticut Voices for Children Page 2 The State of Connecticut’s Youth: Data, Outcomes and Indicators Table of Contents Introduction 4 Methodology 7 The State of Connecticut Youth: Summary Table 8 The State of Connecticut Youth 9 Connecticut Youth Outcomes 12 Educational Achievement and Cognitive Attainment 14 Educational Achievement 14 Education-Related Skills 16 Educational Motivation/Approach Toward Learning 17 Health and Safety 18 Risky Behavior 18 Youth Health 24 Youth Mental Health 25 Social and Emotional Development 26 Social/Community Relationships 26 Emotional/Personal Development 30 Self-Sufficiency 32 Work 32 Family Environment 33 Family Socioeconomic Status 33 Family Health and Safety 34 Community/School Environment 36 Strengths 36 Deficits 37 Conclusions 38 Appendices 39 A. Student Survey Methods 39 B. Positive Youth Development Outcomes: Expert 42 Models Resources 49 Connecticut Voices for Children Page 3 The State of Connecticut’s Youth: Data, Outcomes and Indicators Introduction Healthy communities produce healthy youth. Such communities value youth involvement, provide multiple supports for families, offer opportunities for prosocial youth involvement, and share positive behavioral expectations for youth. Youth living in communities that share a vision for positive youth development are more likely to grow into healthy adults and make positive contributions to society. "As a nation, what do we want for our children, especially our adolescents? Unfortunately, the well being of our youth has traditionally been Naturally, we want them to avoid assessed using mostly negative indicators. Most of our drugs, violence, and crime, and we don't want them to drop out of school administrative and archival data are collected on negative risk or become teen parents. But most behavior indicators, such as juvenile crime rates, teen pregnancy parents want something more for rates and dropout rates. Focusing on the positives in youths’ their children than simply avoiding lives has only recently come to the forefront of youth serious problems. They want development research. Researchers have begun to focus on children who are happy and emotionally healthy, who have protective factors, or assets, among youth and their roles as positive relationships with other mediators of risk. There is recognition that these strengths can people, and who contribute to the render youth resilient in the face of multiple challenges. They can community. While parents hold these lead youth to resist participation in antisocial behaviors despite desires for their individual children, high levels of risk in their lives. our collective aspirations for youth appear limited to avoiding problems. There is surprisingly little focus in the This shift in thinking about youth has led to the advancement of a research literature, in popular positive youth development approach to youth programs. In discussions, and in policy making on other words, program developers, researchers and policy how to promote positive youth makers are increasingly focused on building strengths among development. The trends we track, the data we collect, the programs we our youth as an approach to preventing a variety of youth risk fund, and the media images we see behaviors while simultaneously fostering the development of focus largely on problem behaviors teens who can make valuable contributions to their communities by adolescents." and society as a whole. Child Trends Research Brief Preventing Problems vs. Promoting the Along with this emerging emphasis on positive youth Positive: What Do We Want for Our development programming comes a need to develop positive Children? Moore KA, Halle TG, 5/00 indicators of youth development. A number of researchers have www.childtrends.org/PDF//K7Brief.pdf developed lists of youth development outcomes and indicators, most notably Hawkins and Catalano, the Search Institute, the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, and Child Trends (see Appendix A). We looked to each of these sources for guidance on the most appropriate youth outcomes and indicators to include in this report. However, there is a lack of consensus among the youth outcomes recommended by each of these groups. In other words, there is no one “core set” of youth development indicators. Child Trends, a Washington, DC- based child and adolescent research group, has been at the forefront of an effort to address the inconsistencies among youth Connecticut Voices for Children Page 4 The State of Connecticut’s Youth: Data, Outcomes and Indicators indicator lists and to develop such a core list of indicators. In 2001, Child Trends commissioned Hair and colleagues to examine the research on youth development and youth outcomes, giving special weight to studies conducted with rigorous experimental or longitudinal multivariate designs. They developed a “generic model” of youth development as it relates to youth outcomes, identified those outcomes that, if targeted by community programs, are most likely to “make a difference” for youth, and generated a list of psychometrically validated instruments to be used in measuring each of these outcomes at age-appropriate levels. Child Trends also developed a Youth Outcomes Grid that provides an overview of youth outcome indicators for the youth development field.1 More recently, Child Trends partnered with the Chapin Hall Center for Children to host representatives from 14 states for a youth indicators workshop. The goals of this initiative were to help guide the states in developing common indicators related to youth well being, develop a common language about positive youth development, and attempt to limit the number of youth outcomes and indictors measured by states to those most “malleable” or susceptible to change.2 This workshop was followed by a national meeting of youth development researchers,3 who were charged by Child Trends with identifying the key components of positive youth development, developing valid and reliable indicators of positive youth development, and examining the association between these indicators and the actual well-being of children and youth. In an effort to maintain consistency with this national effort, we have adopted the language and structure generated through this series of initiatives for presenting youth outcomes and indicators throughout this report. The State of Connecticut’s Youth report presents an overview of 1This grid can be found at http://www. childtrends.org/PDF/ the best available and most current data on the overall well- Compendium_Phase1_Intro.pdf. being of Connecticut youth today.4 These data offer a picture of 2For more information, see http://www.chapin. our youth that can be used to promote a “shared sense of uchicago.edu/YouthIndicators/Index.html. accountability”, guide current funding and programmatic 3Information about this conference can be decisions and set a baseline against which to