Oneida County Teen Assessment Project Survey 2015: Alcohol Use

The 2015 Oneida County Teen Assessment Project (TAP) Survey Report was recently released. The survey, which covers 10 topical areas, includes a variety of questions on alcohol use by teens. Below are several slides highlighting some of the recent finds and trends for teens in Oneida County when it comes to using alcohol. Click on any of the graphics to enlarge them.

Overall alcohol use has significantly declined among teens regardless of their age/grade. It has dropped overall from 54% in 1999 saying that they have ever tried alcohol, to only 36% in 2015.

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 Each of the grade levels have also seen fewer teens ever drinking. The chart below shows the breakdown by grade level over the past 16 years of the survey.

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Among those that use alcohol, fewer are using it "regularly" - a few times a month or more - than at any time in the past. Only one in three teens (33%) that do use alcohol say that they use it at least a few times a month or more.

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 Among all teens, fewer are also going binge drinking - where they drink five or more drinks within a couple hours. So not only are fewer teens drinking, those that are drinking are drinking less often and not as much as teens have in the past.

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To see more about teen drinking trends, you can see the entire report here.

Oneida County Teen Assessment Project Survey 2015: Tobacco Use

The Oneida County Teen Assessment Project (TAP) Survey Report was recently released and can now be found through the regional planning office website. The survey, which covers 10 topical areas, includes a variety of questions on tobacco use by teens. Below are several slides highlighting some of the recent findings and trends for teens in Oneida County when it comes to using tobacco products. Click on any of the graphics to enlarge them.

Overall tobacco use has significantly declined among teens regardless of their age/grade. It has dropped overall from 44% saying that they have ever tried a cigarette in the 1999 survey, to only 13% in 2015. Each of the grade levels have also seen fewer teens trying smoking.

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Among smokers, there has also been a decline in frequency of use. Respondents who say that they have ever smoked indicated a significant decrease in the percentage that have smoked in the last 30 days.This is true regardless of the grade of the teen smoker.

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The use of e-cigarettes (electronic cigarettes) is a fairly recent phenomena. About 23% of all teens have ever tried "vaping" - using an e-cigarette.

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Among teens that have used e-cigarettes, most have done so in the past month (65%). More than one in five have done so 10 or more days over the past month.

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To see more information on tobacco use, or any of the topics covered in the 2015 TAP survey, visit the regional planning office website.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month

According to stopbullying.gov, bullying is "unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose."

 In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

• An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
• Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

There are three types of bullying:

• Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things
• Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships
• Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions 

Visit their website (StopBullying.com) to learn more about how to prevent bullying. In the meantime, the most recent Teen Assessment Program survey data from Oneida County teens shows a leveling in the percent of kids reporting being bullied, and a decline in the percent that say that they have bullied others. Click the graphic to enlarge it. The full 2015 Oneida County TAP report is scheduled to be released sometime in November.

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2013 Herkimer County TAP: Teen Perceptions of Self and Weight

While the section of the Teen Assessment Project (TAP) report on teens and their well being covers a wide range of topics (body perception, depression, suicide ideation, etc.) this post is focused on their view view of their own bodies - namely in terms of weight and need for weight gain or loss. Why might this be important? Well according to this article citing the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, how teens perceive themselves when they look into the mirror can be a more significant factor in their risk of suicide than the number on the bathroom scale. The study found adolescents' personal perceptions of being too thin or too fat was associated with heightened risks for suicidal thoughts and attempts. So how did the youth participating int he 2013 Herkimer County TAP view themselves?

To begin with, nearly 30% of all teens saw themselves as overweight, up slightly from when this question was asked in 2009. And one in twenty (5%) said that they were "very overweight". While the majority of teens in 2013 still see their weight as “about right” (56%), this is lower than in 2009 when 60% said that they were about the right weight. 

Not surprisingly, females were a third more likely to see themselves as overweight than males. While one in four males (25%) thought of themselves as overweight, one in three (33%) of females said that they weighed more than they should.

 

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Interestingly, while more than half of all teens (56%) said that their weight was about right, a majority of respondents (50.4%) indicated that they were presently trying to lose weight. For girls this was nearly 2 out of every 3 (64%) ! So despite the fact that only three in ten teens said they were overweight, five in ten are trying to lose weight!

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So who are these teens that are trying to lose weight ? Well if we look at each of those that were overweight, versus those that say their weight is about right, versus those that are underweight, all three groups have components that are looking to lose weight. For example, among teens that they that their weight is "about right", despite this balanced view of their bodies, as many as 40% report that they are still trying to lose weight. Teens that said they were overweight, in comparison, were twice as likely to be trying to lose weight. Eighty-five percent of teens that see themselves as overweight are trying to reduce their weight. Even among the least likely group - underweight teens - as many as one in five (20%) said that they were dieting or doing something in an effort to lose weight. 

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And in each case, if you compare males and females in each grouping, girls are significantly more likely to be dieting, or trying to lose weight, than are males.

To see the complete 2013 TAP report (or any of the previous reports as well), visit the Planning Department's Human Service page.

2013 Herkimer County TAP: Technology and the Internet

With tremendous growth of cell phones and technology devices such as tablets, personal communications  and interactions have changed dramatically in recent decades. The Teen Assessment Project (TAP) survey has focused for several years on establish some baseline data concerning the use of email, social networking, cell phones, and what has become known as "sexting" - the sharing of nude or semi-nude personal pictures across electronic communications, particularly among cell phone users.

Most teens have a web presence, including personal email and profile page. As many as 85% of all teens reported that they have a personal email address that is exclusively theirs. This is significantly more than in 2009 when about 79% said they had personal email. In addition, nearly 80% said they specifically have a personal profile page on Facebook, with one in twenty teens (5%) having multiple Facebook profiles. Twitter accounts are fairly well established among teens as well. Slightly under half (46%) indicated that they had Twitter accounts.

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Cell phones have become a prolific form of communication in our society. nearly 90% of all teens said that they have a cell phone.  Virtually all teens (93%) who have access to a cell phone use text messaging. Nearly 40% of all teens who have a cell phone send more than 100 texts a day, and more than a quarter (27%) send at least 150 texts every day.

In terms of sharing personal information, significantly fewer teens (13%) said that they had given personal information to a stranger online in the 2013 TAP Survey than four years earlier (17%). Similarly fewer indicated that they had actually been asked to meet with a stranger as well (10% in 2013 versus 13% in 2009). Still, both in 2009 and 2013, as many as 10% said that they had actually met a stranger, which was defined as someone who they did not personally know and with whom they had no common friends. 

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Nearly 45% of all teens have been involved in some form of “sexting,” meaning they had sent, received or shared nude or seminude pictures of themselves or others. While this is significantly less than in 2009 (52%), it still represents nearly half of all teens.

About one out of every five teens (22%) said they had shared a nude or seminude picture of themselves via an email, cell phone or through instant messaging. One in three teens (34%) said they had received a nude or seminude picture that someone else sent of themselves through email, their cell phone or instant messaging.  Slightly more than 20% of all teens said someone else, who had received a nude or seminude picture, had shared it with them. 

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About 6% of all 7th graders reported they had electronically sent a nude or semi-nude picture of themselves.  This is significantly less than in the 2009 when one in ten 7th graders (10%) indicated doing this. Also, fewer 9th graders indicated they sent pictures of themselves in 2013 than in 2009 data (2013 - 20%; 2009 - 30%). The percentage of 11th graders sharing such pictures of themselves remained essentially the same (approximately 40%).

 

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Among 7th graders, 14% said that others had sent them nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves; this is down from 22% in 2009. Also, a smaller proportion of 9th grade respondents reported ever receiving such pictures (2013 - 33%; 2009 - 45%).  Among 11th graders, the percent reportedly receiving nude or semi-nude pictures remained unchanged at about 55%.

To see the complete 2013 TAP report (or any of the previous reports as well), visit the Planning Department's Human Service page.

2013 Herkimer County TAP: Tobacco Use Among Teens

Tobacco use by teens in Herkimer County has seen considerable declined as measured by the Herkimer County Teen Assessment Project (TAP) survey. These declines parallel national changes, and show a significant drop in the percentage of teens that have ever smoked..

In the first Herkimer County TAP survey, which was done in 1997, half of all teens (50%) said that they had ever smoked a whole cigarette. This has declined precipitously since then. By 2005 less than a third (32%) of all teens said that they had ever smoked, and in 2013 only one in six (18%) indicated that they had ever used tobacco. This decline is evident across all grade levels, suggesting that the change in behavior is widespread. The drop between 1997 and 2013 is very similar for eleventh, ninth and seventh graders - from 67% to 32% among eleventh graders; from 53% to 19% of ninth graders; and from 31% to 5% of all seventh grade students.

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Frequency of the use of tobacco however, has not changed much among those that smoke. While it is true that between 1997 and 2001 (or between the first and second times the survey was conducted) the percentage of Herkimer County youth that said that they smoked "regularly" (i.e. 10 or more days per month) declined significantly, there has been no statistical change in smoking patterns since that time. Between 1997 and 2001, the percentage of teens that smoked "regularly" fell from 40% of teen smokers to 34%. This was a statistically significant drop in the frequency of tobacco use among youth that smoke. Since 2001 however, there has been no statistical change among the percentage of "regular" users of tobacco. In 2013, the percent of teen smokers is around 31%, statistically the same as it was twelve years earlier in 2001. So while fewer teens are smoking, those that do smoking are using tobacco at a similar use level as they have in the past.

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While we have seen a drop in the percentage of teens that have ever smoked, there is one category of tobacco use that has not seen a decline in use - chewing tobacco. The use of chewing tobacco is largely a male phenomena that has held fairly steady since it was first measured among Herkimer County teens back in the 1997 TAP survey. From 1997 to 2013 about one in eight (12%) of all males have indicated that they had ever used chewing tobacco. This has been very consistent, except for 2009 when as many as 16% of males reported ever having used this tobacco product.

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To see the complete 2013 TAP report (or any of the previous reports as well), visit the Planning Department's Human Service page.

2013 Herkimer County TAP: Alcohol Use Among Teens

One of the basic areas we have covered in every Teen Assessment Project (TAP) survey has been alcohol use by teens. We begin by asking teens at what age did they first have more than a "few sips" of alcohol. They have the option, of course, to say that they have never had  a drink of alcohol other than possibly a few sips.



What we have found is that the percent of teens who ever have had a drink of alcohol has declined significantly over the years, especially since 2005.

Since 2005, the percent of teens who said that they have ever had a drink has dropped from 56% to around 34% - from more than half of all teens to just one third ! Clearly fewer teens are drinking while in high school than they were 15 years ago.

We also looked at the frequency of drinking among teens that do use alcohol. It's one thing to see fewer teens drinking, but the question of how often those that do imbibe use alcohol is also a concern. We examined only those teens that said that they have ever had a drink and asked them how often they have at least one drink. In particular we were interested in looking at what we loosely defined as "regular users" of alcohol. These were seen as anyone who said that they drank at least "a few times a month" or more often. Just as in the case of the percent of all teens that have ever had a drink, the percent of teen drinkers that are "regular users" of alcohol has declined significantly since 1997.

From the 52% of teen drinkers saying that they used alcohol at least a few times per month in 1997, to the 35% of teenage drinkers in 2013 saying that they use alcohol "regularly", this number has dropped considerably.

So it appears as though fewer teens are drinking, and those that do drink are drinking less often. That left us wondering about the age of introduction to alcohol among teen drinkers. When we look at the percent of teens drinkers that say that their first drink of alcohol was at age 12 or younger, we find that this, not surprisingly, has also seen significant decline over the years, and especially since 2005.

While nearly half of all teen drinkers (49%) said that they had had their first drink at age 12 or younger in 1997, that percentage had fallen off slightly to around 44% in 2005. Since then, however, the percent of teen drinkers who indicated that they had an early introduction to alcohol has dipped to only 30%. So not only are fewer teens drinking than in prior years, but those that are choosing to drink are waiting longer to have their first drink, and are drinking less frequently than in the past.

Finally, teenage binge drinking is an area of great concern among parents, community members and law enforcement. Binge drinking is generally considered to have occurred when someone has five (5) or more drinks within a two to three hour period. Generally speaking the percent of teen drinkers engaging in binge drinking has steadily declined since the Herkimer County TAP survey was first administered in 1997. From a high of 46% of drinkers saying that they had gone binge drinking in the last 30 days in 1997, to a low of 28% of teen drinkers who say that they had been binge drinking in the past 30 days in the 2013 survey, this percentage has dropped significantly.

If we look at binge drinking habits among males and females, you can see that in both cases their has been a steady decline in this type of activity regardless of gender. The only unusual piece of data is that females appear to not have changed their binge drinking behavior since the last survey was completed in 2009 - 25% of all female teen drinkers said that they had gone binge drinking in the last 30 days in both the 2009 and 2013 surveys.

2013 Appendix A: Comparison of Herkimer County TAP Data (1997-2013)

Probably the most valuable part of the TAP survey report is Appendix A - it is a compendium of tables showing data from each of the older Teen Assessment Project (TAP) survey results along with the most recent one.

At present the report includes survey results from 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009 and now 2013. It also includes data break outs for male and females, as well as for students by grade (seventh, ninth and eleventh graders).

To see ONLY Appendix A, click on this link and see how the data has changed in the 16 years since the survey was first done in Herkimer County. To see the entire report, including the descriptive chapters, visit the Human Service Planning section of the Regional Planning Office website.

The 2013 Herkimer County TAP Survey Results Now Available !

The 2013 version of the Herkimer County Teen Assessment Project (TAP) survey report is now available ! This represents the fifth time the survey has been conducted in Herkimer County, the first time being in 1997. The survey is done on a four year cycle, so data now exists for teens in the county for the years 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013. In total, more than ten thousand surveys have been collected over the sixteen years, representing about 80% of the target population each time the survey was administered.

The 2013 survey is generally broken into ten topical areas including: tobacco; alcohol; marijuana and other drugs; sexuality; mental health; perceptions of school and future; parent/child relationships; perceptions of self, peers and community; personal safety; and the internet and technology. The appendices includes a comparative table with data for all of the past surveys as well as the present survey. In addition, the present survey is broken out by gender and grade.

Portions of the survey will be discussed in future blog posts including material not in the current report. For now, you might want to download a copy of the 2013 report or go to the Planning Department website to view any of the previous reports. If you have questions about the materials you can contact me via email  or email Chip Bassett in our office.

2013 Herkimer County Teen Assessment Project Report to be Released Soon !

The 2013 version of the Herkimer County Teen Assessment Project (TAP)  should be released within a short time. The TAP report, which represents the fifth time data has been collected from Herkimer County teens over 16 years, will contain a variety of information from local youth about their experiences in school, in their homes, and within their the communities. Topics covered include alcohol and drug use, bullying, sexuality issues, depression and suicide, and internet use, as well as many others.

Until the report is released your best bet for Herkimer County TAP data is the 2009 survey results. The 2013 Herkimer County TAP data has been analyzed and a report of its findings, along with all of the TAP survey reports, will be found on the Human Service Planning page of HOCCPP as well as on here.

In the meantime, here's a look back at some of the 2009 results in Herkimer County. Click any of them to enlarge that graphic.

2009 TAP Smoking Data

2009 TAP Drinking Data

2009 TAP Marijuana Data

2009 TAP Sexuality Data

2009 TAP Harassment Data

2009 TAP Suicide Ideation Data

2009 TAP Web Presence Data

2009 TAP Web Behavior Data

2009 TAP Sexting Data

Indicators of School Crime and Safety

Michael G. Planty, Ph.D., chief of victimization statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), appeared on C-SPAN’s America by the Numbers on May 31, 2013. He described the latest trends in school crime and presented data on homicides and suicides at school, nonfatal violent and property crime, injuries from firearms and other weapons on school property, bullying, gangs, illegal drugs, and hate crimes at school. He also described trends in school discipline, safety, and security measures. 

Two of the more interesting trends appear to be that (a) violence and theft have been declining in school settings since about 1992; and (b) since the year 2000, school security measures have been on the rise in schools. A pdf covering all of the basics of the report can be found on the BJS website. A couple of the more interesting graphs appear below.

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As noted, one of the topics covered was also school safety measures implemented in the last ten years or so. These include everything from student uniforms, staff ID cards, security cameras and armed security officers in schools.  This graph shows the increases from 2000 through 2010 in these (and other) safety measures.

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You can view more of the data in the preliminary tables from the forthcoming report Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2012, located on the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) website. The report is based on findings from several BJS and NCES data collections, including the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the School Survey on Crime and Safety, and the School and Staffing Survey. The link wasn’t ready when I first checked it earlier today but should be active soon !

Another source for national data can be found in the 2012 Statistical Abstract for the United States, in their School Crime and Safety section. Their data covers incident reporting, disciplinary behaviors, weapons at school, bullying, and selected safety measures at schools.

Locally, the Teen Assessment Project (TAP), conducted through the Herkimer and Oneida Counties Comprehensive Planning Program (HOCCPP), contains a variety of data from local teens about their experiences in school, home and the community, including bullying, violence, and many other topics. The latest Oneida County version of the TAP was done in 2011; the most recent Herkimer County TAP survey was conducted in 2013. However since that data hasn't been analyzed yet, your best bet for Herkimer County TAP data is the 2009 survey results. Once the 2013 Herkimer County TAP data is analyzed a report of its findings, along with all of the TAP survey reports, will be found on the Human Service Planning page of HOCCPP.