Making Every Day Count - Teens

Appendices 53• Aggression—Three statements about whether youth talkback to adults, argue and have a bad temper, such as“Other people my age think I have a bad temper.”In addition to the constructs, we looked at two outcomesthat were measured through individual items on the survey.• Shyness—One statement: “I am shy.”• Community service—One question: “How often haveyou participated in community service in the pastfour months?” (Asked only on the follow-up survey inSpring 2008.)Academic Success 4Youth’s academic success outcomes were measured througha series of questions on the baseline and final surveys. Eightoutcomes were measured in this area. The following is a listof the five academic success constructs we measured, with asample of the type of statements to which youth respondedwithin each construct. Each construct has a possible valuefrom 1=not very true to 4=very true, with 4 being the mostfavorable.• School liking—Three statements that focus on how youthfeel about school, such as “I look forward to going toschool every day.”• School effort—Four statements that focus on how hardyouth work in school, such as “I work very hard on myschoolwork.”• Importance of school—Seven statements regarding howimportant school is to the youth, such as “Being a goodstudent is important to me.”• Teacher connectedness—Five statements that focus onhow the youth get along with teachers, such as “I usuallylike my teachers.”• Academic confidence—Five statements about how comfortableyouth are with their ability to do schoolwork,such as “I’m certain I can master the skills taught inschool this year.”Youth also reported on three academic success outcomesthat we measured through single questions on the survey:report card grades, times skipping school and times beingsuspended.Healthy Lifestyles 5Youth’s healthy lifestyle outcomes were measured througha series of questions on each of the youth surveys. Threeof the healthy lifestyle outcomes were measured by askingyouth a series of questions that formed healthy lifestyle constructs.The first construct has a possible value from 1 to 4,with 1=not very true to 4=very true, while the second andthird each has a possible value from 1 to 5, with 1=none ofthem to 5=all of them.• Future connectedness—Five statements about how muchyouth think about their future and how their currentactivities help them get prepared for the future, such as“I do things outside of school to prepare for my future.”• Positive peers—Eight statements about how many oftheir friends did certain favorable things (for example,being involved in school clubs, activities or sports, orthinking it is important to work hard in school), suchas “Number of friends who think it is important to workhard on school work.”• Negative peers—Eight statements about how many oftheir friends did certain unfavorable things (for example,cheating on school tests or pressuring youth to drinkalcohol), such as “Number of friends who have brokeninto a car or building to steal something.”In addition to these constructs, we asked youth about healthrelatedbehaviors, measured with single items:• On each survey, youth were asked how many days in theprevious week they had participated in vigorous aerobicexercise for at least 20 minutes, from 0=0 days to 7=7days.• They were also asked about contact they may have hadwith law enforcement in the 12 months before eachsurvey. Youth were asked how many times they had beenstopped by the police, how many times they had beenarrested and how many times they had been put on probation.In addition, youth were asked if they had ever hada physical fight resulting in injuries that required medicalattention, and if they had ever carried a weapon.• We also asked youth about their level of involvement withspecific risk behaviors: smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol,smoking marijuana, taking OxyContin, taking ecstasy,taking steroids, sniffing inhalants and having sexual intercourse.For those who’d ever had sex, we asked whetherthey’d used a condom at most recent intercourse.Involvement of surveyed youth was particularly low onthe last four drug-use items. For analysis, these items werecombined into a single item labeled other drugs.