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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver, Friday March 30, 2007 - 5 Youth survey raises eyebrows at Catholic board By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF In the last 12 months, have you seriously considered suicide or taking your own life? Questions like this, which were put to Grade 7 and 10 students as part of a Halton wide survey, are drawing criticism for their uncensored approach to information generation. The Halton Youth Survey, created by the `Our Kids Network,' was issued to schools throughout the Halton region in mid-October of last year with the intention of measuring the health and wellbeing of youth in the area. The survey is anonymous, only requiring students to list what school they go to and their postal code to get an approximate idea of the area they live in. "Their goal is about creating the potential for all kids to thrive and in some neighborhoods it's happening and in others there are some challenges and some struggles," said Adelina Urbanski, Commissioner of Social and Community Services for Halton. "The baseline information is intended to look at which neighborhoods are having a little bit of trouble so we can provide the right kinds of services in those areas to bring it all up." While no one is complaining about the goal of the survey a number of parents and even a few trustees from the Halton Catholic District School Board have voiced concerns over the nature of the questions the survey asks. While many of the questions seem perfectly normal and ask things like, `Since September, in what way were you bullied the most at school?' other questions have raised a few eyebrows. How difficult would it be for you to get the following if you wanted some... A) Cigarettes, B) Alcohol, C) Marijuana, D) Other illegal drugs. Students are given a scale of from `Very Difficult' to `Very Easy' to `Never Tried to Get Any' to choose from. "I have heard of concerns and some of the questions I read myself I had concerns over," said, Halton Hills trustee Rosanna Palmieri. "There were some questions that I didn't think were appropriate, especially for the Grade 7s." Oakville trustee Pauline Houlahan, also has problems with the survey, but says she can also see its relevance. "I see the value to the ministry and to public health to ask these kinds of questions and get a broad spectrum analysis of our area. Any statistics like those are always valuable to whatever area they apply," she said. "As a parent I can also see the parents side because we parent to our own Christian "There were some questions that I didn't think were appropriate, especially for Grade 7s." Halton Hills trustee Rosanna Palmieri values and our own parenting values in our own homes and we expose our children to what we choose to expose our children to. When you have a survey broad written like this it steps into that territory, especially with the Grade 7s." Urbanski defends the questions, like the one that asks about suicide, as critical to the study. "Although a question like that might make some people uncomfortable and you could say, `My God, why are you asking that of a Grade 7 student?' I can tell you that the results of previous studies and also this one are showing that you do need to ask the question," she said. "Not all kids have a great start in life or have a great situation going on and research and other studies, national and provincial, have shown that is an appropriate question to ask at that age, as sad as that might be." Although the survey is anonymous, Urbanski says, it can still help students plagued by these types of problems. "Is there a pocket of something going on in a particular community? Is there a group of schools in an area that seems to be showing a high prevalence of these kinds of thoughts?" she said. "If there is that means you drill down and you try to find out what's going on and are there services that could be put in place. It does have an impact." Not all trustees had a problem with the survey's questions. During the March 20 meeting of the Halton Catholic District School Board, where the controversy of the survey questions was being discussed, Burlington Student Trustee Ryan Durran defended the survey's embattled representatives. "Some of those are really tough questions, but I feel they needed to be asked, so I'd just like to say good job," he said. This act provoked an angry retort from a concerned par- ent who voiced his feelings that children should not be asked such questions, before being silenced by Board Chair Al Bailey. 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