MAHANOY CITY - Mahanoy Area and 11 other school districts in Schuylkill County will participate in the 2013 Pennsylvania Youth Survey this fall to gather information for prevention and intervention programs.
The Mahanoy Area school board approved its participation in the survey at its Aug. 22 meeting, which begins with the distribution of parental permission forms.
District Superintendent Joie L. Green was informed by district social worker Andrea M. Caulfield that the biannual survey is expected to be conducted at the end of September or October when all materials are received.
PAYS is conducted by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency with the support of the state Department of Education and the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.
PAYS serves to gather local data and information to address such problems as alcohol, tobacco, other drug use and violence in schools and communities. According to the PCCD website, the commonwealth has conducted a survey of school students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades since 1989 to learn about their behavior, attitudes and knowledge concerning alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and violence. It is available to all public, private and charter schools in the state at no cost to the schools because of sponsorships of state agency partners.
The data gathered in PAYS serve two primary needs:
- The results provide school administrators, state agency directors, legislators and others with critical information concerning the changes in patterns of the use and abuse of these harmful substances and behaviors.
- The survey assesses risk factors that are related to these behaviors and the protective factors that help guard against them. This information allows community leaders to direct prevention resources to areas where they are likely to have the greatest impact.
Prevention Services Coordinator Diane Rowland with the Schuylkill County Drug and Alcohol Program is the contact person for the program in the county.
"This survey is conducted every other year on the odd year," Rowland said. "Since 2003, all 12 public school districts in the county have participated in this survey. It's a great source of information for prevention planning and grant writing, so it really is very valuable to us."
Rowland said the program is designed so that the same groups of students are surveyed every two years in order to see changes in attitudes.
"The program is longitudinal, so the same group of kids take the survey year after year," Rowland said. "This way, you can follow them, not per individual child but per group. So if we looked at the sixth-grade survey from 2009, and when they take it this year when they're in 10th grade, we can see county-wide how their attitudes and usage has changed with age. That is a good strategy in that it keeps that same cohort of students together and follows them through the years."
Rowland said it is fortunate to have all 12 county school districts participating in order to get a very good county-wide overview.
"The survey also collects other data, such as students' perception of their communities, measures their perception of their school, such as dealing with school safety," Rowland said. "It also deals with other things. It asks them if there are opportunities in their communities for them to be noticed for doing things well and how connected they are to their communities. It measures a lot of different things, not just substance use."