Recorded Webinar Available: Identifying Community Priorities for Child Well-Being

Many com­mu­ni­ties gath­er data on young peo­ple to assess what ser­vices they need to thrive. But do those efforts doc­u­ment the needs and strengths that real­ly influ­ence outcomes?

In the lat­est webi­nar in the Foundation’s Using What Works to Improve Child Well-Being series, an expert pan­el dis­cuss­es how the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey, one of the key tools in the Evidence2Success frame­work, gen­er­ates data on risk and pro­tec­tive fac­tors that help com­mu­ni­ties address prob­lems for youth before they start. Risk and pro­tec­tive fac­tors are key com­po­nents of pre­ven­tion sci­ence, a top­ic cov­ered in the first webi­nar of the series, which is host­ed by the Forum for Youth Invest­ment.

Devel­oped by a con­sor­tium of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Social Devel­op­ment Research Group (SDRG), the Dart­ing­ton Social Research Unit, Child Trends and the Foundation’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group, the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of how kids are doing, with ques­tions geared to iden­ti­fy­ing the most effec­tive evi­dence-based approach­es for pre­ven­tion and ear­ly inter­ven­tion. The self-report sur­vey, giv­en to stu­dents in mid­dle school and high school, gen­er­ates insights in five key areas ― edu­ca­tion and skills attain­ment, emo­tion­al well-being, phys­i­cal health, pos­i­tive behav­ior and pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships. Sur­vey results can help com­mu­ni­ties see the links among risk fac­tors, pro­tec­tive fac­tors and well-being and high­light areas in which pub­lic agen­cies and com­mu­ni­ties might focus their investments.

“For near­ly all the out­comes and risk and pro­tec­tive fac­tors on the sur­vey, there are evi­dence-based ear­ly inter­ven­tion pro­grams, so com­mu­ni­ties have a clear way to respond to what they have learned,” said Ilene Berman, a senior asso­ciate with the Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group. ​“This sur­vey also offers a clear way to include youth voice in this effort.”

Pro­grams to address the risk and pro­tec­tive fac­tors cov­ered in the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey can be found on the Blue­prints for Healthy Youth Devel­op­ment web­site, or on oth­er data­bas­es of evi­dence-based programs.

Dur­ing the webi­nar, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of two of the four sites using Evidence2Success — Mobile, Alaba­ma, and Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island — described how they have used the sur­vey. But the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey also may be help­ful to com­mu­ni­ties not imple­ment­ing Evidence2Success. If you are inter­est­ed in using the sur­vey in your com­mu­ni­ty, please review guide­lines for the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey out­side Evidence2Success to learn more. A sam­ple data report from the first admin­is­tra­tion of the sur­vey in Prov­i­dence shows how sur­vey infor­ma­tion can be pack­aged to share with the com­mu­ni­ty, and a work­sheet on col­lect­ing pub­lic data can help com­mu­ni­ties sup­ple­ment sur­vey data with oth­er information.

Watch the webi­nar recording