Pennsylvania Youth Survey: More than an ounce of prevention
Every other year since 1989, the Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) has been available to Pennsylvania schools at sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades. Sadly, too few schools are capitalizing on it.
Administered in individual school buildings, PAYS uses a 42 question survey to gauge students’ usages, behaviors, and attitudes relative to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD).
Questions are framed across four domains of community, family, school, and peer-individual to help determine where likely protective and risk factors exist within and among these four interrelated areas.
The inquiries call attention to students’ readiness (or obstacles) to learning, such as nutrition, parental incarceration, military deployment of a family member, or loss of a family member or close friend.
Items reflecting current societal concerns have been added to include questions on illegal prescription drug use and abuse, gambling, depression and suicide ideation, violence/bullying, Internet safety, gang involvement, and texting while driving.
Beginning with the 2013 school year, PAYS was offered at no charge to all schools — public, private, charter, and parochial — courtesy of an alliance among the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (PDDAP), and Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).
Last fall, 200,622 students from 891 schools in 62 counties completed the instrument.
Thanks to the efforts of Wyoming Valley Alcohol and Drug Services, Inc. (WVADS) and its partners, Luzerne County’s take rate was the most ever with 3,653 (77.3 percent of participating schools’ enrollment) students surveyed even though only eight public school districts and one charter school participated.
More Luzerne County schools must follow their lead.
Of the seven counties contiguous with Luzerne, schools in Carbon (five school districts), Columbia (four school districts), Lackawanna (four school districts, one charter school), Schuylkill (12 school districts, four parochial schools), and Monroe (one school district) took part.
PAYS results for individual schools and districts are sent directly to those entities with survey outcomes for individual students remaining anonymous and confidential.
Made available by PCCD, the PAYS Workbook for School Professionals and the PAYS How-To Guide for School Professionals are designed to assist educators in their analysis and interpretation of the data sets as well as including their constituencies from the start.
With the expectation of using the data as challenges to generate ATOD programming ideas, these resources offer suggestions for school administrators to display and disseminate PAYS results to their citizens and community leaders (parents, city/borough councils, PTAs, school boards, employees, students, etc.).
Whether at the county, district, or school level, PAYS is the primary tool in Pennsylvania’s drug prevention approach of using data to drive ATOD programming decisions in that it:
• Assists in finding root causes to students’ problems and well-being instead of looking at symptoms after the fact.
• Provides valuable insights from youths reporting their own recent experiences.
• Facilitates understanding of the “whole child,” for better or worse, relative to risk and protective factors within and across community, family, school, and peer-individual contexts.
• Fosters school and community collaboration aimed at promoting lifestyles free of substance use, abuse and addiction.
Toward a broader view of prevention, PAYS data are increasingly valuable to schools over time as patterns of use and abuse of harmful substances of cohort groups are tracked from grades six through 12.
Credible research on the national level also suggests that this proactive approach is of the utmost effectiveness in helping youth develop into healthy, productive members of society.
Youth serving nonprofits, county agencies, legislators, and community leaders (District Attorney’s Office, educational intermediate units, Children and Youth, Juvenile Probation, judges/district magistrates, county/ borough/city councils, United Way, local police forces, etc.) need to be part of examining these county-wide results. Only through combined efforts of decision makers and key field representatives from these groups working alongside frontline educators can significant improvements be realized in designing and implementing prevention education programs and in dealing with endemic problems associated with drug abuse—it’s not the responsibility of any one institution.
In keeping with these suggestions regarding the utility of PAYS on the county and individual school/district levels, WVADS’s commitments to prevention education aren’t just rhetorical. In collaboration with PCCD, WVADS organized and sponsored a seminar for county partners and educators. The spring seminar suggested multiple techniques for the analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of survey results.
Secondly, through WVADS’s Education and Transition for At-Risk Youth and Operation Saturation: Reducing Underage and Dangerous Drinking programs, two presentations have been developed that summarize Luzerne County PAYS results. The presentations are available for organizations and can be arranged by contacting Jason Harlen, CEO of WVADS, at firstname.lastname@example.org or 570-820-8888 or emailing me at the address provided below.
Aggregate survey results and identification of participating districts and schools are available for public consumption for all counties at www.pays.state.pa.us.
Dr. Vito A. Forlenza is an organizational/educational consultant. He can be reached at email@example.com.