Now you see it, now you don’t. In the past few weeks, thousands of public datasets and webpages have disappeared from government websites. These data purges are occurring because of orders targeting diversity and gender initiatives at the federal level. Community Solutions uses many of these datasets in our day-to-day work to inform us and the communities we serve on issues from demographics to poverty to chronic diseases. Without this information, we cannot accurately report on community conditions or provide information to changemakers to accurately inform their decisions. But perhaps this is the point.
Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System monitors behavioral health in adolescents
One such disappearing dataset was the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. This is a state and national survey monitoring the health behaviors of adolescents and is housed on the CDC website. The survey details student demographics, youth health behaviors and conditions, substance use behaviors, and student experiences.
The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) was implemented to explore unhealthy behaviors in adolescent populations and monitor them over time. We most recently used this data set to inform our Status of Girls report.
The YRBSS data reveals poignant snapshots of Ohio’s youth.
The YRBSS data reveals poignant snapshots of Ohio’s youth. For example, while girls in Ohio graduate at higher rates than boys, this doesn’t mean that their time in school is less turbulent.
The YRBSS data showed that 13 percent of high school girls in Ohio reported that they did not go to school because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to school, compared to 5 percent of boys. Often, girls are under unique pressures and may experience bullying more often and in different ways than boys. Both middle and high school girls were found to have much higher rates of electronic bullying when compared to boys of the same age. Additionally, over half of middle school girls reported being bullied on school grounds, compared to 36 percent of middle school boys.
Valuable data show the link between bullying and severe mental health outcomes
The YRBSS revealed that over half of high school girls in Ohio reported feeling hopeless every day for at least two weeks in the past 12 months and 1 in 3 girls seriously considered suicide. Nationally, these statistics tell the same story, and like Ohio, both data points are higher for girls than boys. Without this valuable data source, we would only have anecdote and could only speculate about how girls and young women are faring.
The censorship of publicly available data is concerning.
The censorship of publicly available data is concerning. Community Solutions worked to preserve the data we use regularly to have a backup if the tables get scrubbed and reuploaded. We’ve scoured our personal work files to find data which had already been removed and are ready if data is no longer accessible or is changed.
Accurate, accessible data is extremely important to understand the scope of community conditions and resource allocation. In response to the mental health data that YRBSS has, it can literally save the lives of youth. In the name of government efficiency, how are we supposed to decide where to spend energy and resources without data? Data does not create issues, it illuminates them. More data does not mean more problems and it does not mean that the problems go away. But data does mean that problems can be addressed in an efficient and thoughtful way.
