Academy Administers Health Survey

On Wednesday, May 20, over 900 Exonians filled out a survey titled the “Youth Health Risk Behavior Survey,” a 116-question document that aims to anonymously gather statistics on a variety of behaviors of students in the Exeter community. The questions looked into private topics such as alcohol use, sexual activities, dietary concerns and drug use.

According to Health Education Instructor Carol Cahalane, the Health Department, Health and Wellness Council and the Dean of Students collaborated in Aug. 2014 to adjust the survey. Originally a national questionnaire created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the groups worked to shift it to a more “Exeter-pertinent” question set.

“[We looked] at which questions we wanted to retain from the national survey and which we wanted to take out to make room for other questions that might be more pertinent to life at Exeter,” Cahalane said.

“[We looked] at which questions we wanted to retain from the national survey and which we wanted to take out to make room for other questions that might be more pertinent to life at Exeter.”

The Academy had utilized this same type of survey before in 2005, 2007 and, most recently, in 2011, when, as Dean of Students Melissa Mischke explained, the data collecting was not as thorough as the Academy would have liked. Due to this, the data collection for the 2015 survey was entrusted to an outside university program that will collect, cross-tabulate and collate the data and compare it to the national high school averages.

“So what [the outside university program] will do is cross-tabulate day students with a certain topic,” Mischke said. “They’ll take different slices of the data and do some cross comparisons to see where our peaks in risky behavior emerge.”

Cahalane said these results will help health education upgrade its prevention efforts by knowing what issues are on campus, aid health services in noticing any unmet needs and inform the parents and staff about the percentages of students performing risky behavior relative to the national high school average.

She also addressed that not only will the health services, staff and parents benefit from the data, but also the students who by learning more about their peers may remove false notions about risky behaviors at Exeter.

“Primarily, I think the students will be the biggest beneficiary if we use the data seriously. [It can] help students understand what their peers are doing,” Cahalane said. “As a health instructor, this is really beneficial because it can rid students of the stereotype, ‘everyone does this or that.’”

Breaking these stereotypes is often a tough task, for learning about the risky behaviors of students will often put the students in a difficult situation, unaware of whether or not they will be punished if they tell the truth. However, Mischke noted that this survey was a way to remove this “intrusiveness” by having students reply anonymously to questions relating to private matters.

“I hope students take this seriously, replying honestly. It’s a way for us to get at something that is really important without going to each person and being intrusive and asking, ‘hey, how much sex do you have?’ or ‘are you doing drugs?’ which students are not going to share with the administration,” Mischke said.

Despite the anonymity, Cahalane understood that a number of students would not answer truthfully, due to the nonexistent “risk” of informing the administration about risky behaviors. She explained that even with untruthful answers, if the survey is completed several times in the next few years, trends will arise that are worth noting.

“We know that it is not the whole story. We know that it is what kind of answers they will give on this particular day,” she said. “But with continued application of this kind of model every couple years, it gives us a sense of the trends on campus, including where the cracks might be and also where the strengths are.”

Students agreed that the survey will have beneficial effects on the campus, noting that the results will open up a “clearer picture” about the lives of students at the Academy.

“I think the survey will provide some useful data for the administration that they could use, and it might provide a clearer picture of what the community on campus behaves like,” prep Francis Baviera Maloney said.

Upper Jan Stratmann also praised the survey. “I think it was good to check up on the mental status of the students,” he said. “The survey is really a good opportunity to get an honest opinion.”

Likewise, several faculty extolled the effectiveness of the survey and marked it as a good way to discover the areas of concern at Exeter.

“I think it allows us to better project student education and allocate resources in order to address these areas of concern,” modern languages instructor Viviana Santos said. “This may mean additional resources for counseling or teacher professional development.”

However, the survey underwent a hiccup at the start, as the first link sent out to the student body was missing a hyphen and hence did not function. Although it was quickly solved by Cahalane and Mischke, who sent out a correct link minutes into the survey, some students reported that they were not able to finish in the allotted time of the advisee meeting block.

“In terms of organization, it would have been probably better if the first link worked because I heard from a couple of students that they couldn’t finish the survey in time,”  Strattman said.

Despite the technical issues, the project still yielded a large turnout. When the data is finalized, the university program will hold a presentation to the Academy’s faculty, while Mischke will share the data with students, staff and parents alike.

Cahalane hopes that in future years, the survey will be completed every two years in order to keep a constant study of the risky behaviors that students experience at Exeter. That way, the Exeter community could mark the direction in which the Academy is heading. “It would be nice to be in sync with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which comes out with a new survey every two years,” Cahalane said. “And this seems to be the plan. I’m hopeful that it will remain the plan.”