Program Description:
The Kansas Communities That Care (KCTC) Student Survey is a vehicle for schools to track teen use of harmful substances such as alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, in addition to teen perceptions about school and community involvement, bullying, gambling, and guns. In addition, the survey provides a baseline for teen participation in, perception of, and attitudes toward both pro-social and anti-social behavior at the peer, school, family and community levels. The KCTC Student Survey has been administered annually by Greenbush throughout the state since 1994, with funding by Addiction and Prevention Services of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

The survey gathers information from students in the sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth grades, by asking their opinions on various subjects, including sections on demographics and school climate, peer influences, drug/alcohol/tobacco usage, community-based perceptions, and family domain. Resulting data is used to help school and community leaders assess current conditions and prioritize areas of greatest need in order to plan prevention and intervention programs.

Based on a complete community prevention-planning model to promote positive youth development, the survey’s focus is on health-risk behaviors that can result in injury or impede positive development among youth. It aides in identifying risk factors (or predictors of problem behaviors) and protective factors (or predictors of positive youth outcomes).

Just as medical researchers have found risk factors for heart attacks, such as diets high in fats, lack of exercise and smoking, research has found that an interrelationship exists between adolescent drug abuse, delinquency, school dropout, and violence, and thus were able to identify risk factors for these problems. Then in order to prevent problem behaviors from happening, we need to identify and increase the factors that protect against problem behaviors and reduce the factors that increase the risks.

For a complete description of the survey, go to the website www.ctcdata.org. There you may view actual state, county and regional data. (Specific district or school data is available only to that particular district using a password.)

Services we offer:
Greenbush contacts all Kansas public and private schools annually to encourage their participation in the survey. Complete administration instructions, materials, support, and data compilation, broken down by district and school, along with county and statewide results for comparison, are provided free of charge to all participating schools. In addition, we maintain a website (www.ctcdata.org) devoted to this project with data going back to 1995. Districts can also easily create custom reports from data on the website, or contact us for more detailed or specific data.

How does this benefit schools:
By participating in this study, schools have the valuable opportunity to learn more about the specific needs of its students. Because it is a federally approved needs assessment, it is used to support grant applications and funders are more likely to look positively on the survey as an objective tool. The survey is a tool for administrators, teachers, community coalitions and parents to gauge the extent of drug and alcohol awareness by area kids, as well as the extent of substance use in schools.

Title IV (Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities) federal guidance requires school districts receiving Title IV funding to implement a needs assessment of the prevalence of weapons, drugs, alcohol and violence in the school and community. School districts use data from this survey to meet this requirement. After survey results are compiled, school districts can identify areas of need and choose programs and activities to impact these areas of need. Subsequent KCTC surveys are then used to determine if the programs and activities that were implemented are having a positive impact.

Contact Information:

Pricing:
No charge. Reimbursement for postage costs is also available.