The Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) School District Profile Reports were prepared using data from the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey. HYS is a collaborative effort between the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Washington State Department of Health, the Department of Social and Health Service's Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, the Department of Commerce, and the Liquor Control Board. The HYS is administered to students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 in school districts across Washington state in October of even-numbered years beginning in 2002. HYS measures health risk behaviors that contribute to morbidity, mortality, and social problems among youth. These behaviors include safety and violence, physical activity, diet, weight, mental health, alcohol, tobacco and other drug use, and related risk and protective factors.

We combined data from all participating students in each school district and across all surveyed grades for each of the 24 indicators. Survey questions change and for HYS 2012 not all indicators were included in previous survey years or in all surveyed grades. On page 10 the report provides a summary of the indicators by survey years (2004-2012) for 8th, 10th and 12th grades. On the last page of the report a table summarizes comparisons of statistically significant (unlikely to have occurred by chance) differences between 2010 and 2012. In order to generalize to all students in the district, the responses were weighted by gender and grade level based on demographics of enrollment in each district.

The School District Health Profile report provides student health indicator data for King County school districts and compares each district to King County and Washington state.

Reports of HYS data produced by the Washington State Department of Health are based only on the sample they select for HYS. However, HYS School District Profile reports produced by Public Health – Seattle & King County include data from all participating schools, including the DOH sample and other schools that piggy-backed on the state sample. Because of this, there may be slight differences between the Washington State Department of Health reports and the King County HYS School District Profile Reports.

Race and ethnicity are markers for complex social, economic, and other factors that can influence community and individual health in important ways. Many communities of color have experienced social and economic discrimination and other forms of racism that can negatively affect their health and well-being. This report provides data by self-reported race/ethnicity to identify racial and ethnic health disparities. This data can support development of policies and priorities that promote equity and social justice for all of our communities.

On the HYS, youth are asked to mark any race/ethnicity category that applies from a standard list. Analyses by race are presented by mutually exclusive categories. If you have further questions about race classification, please contact data.request@kingcounty.gov.

Socioeconomic status (SES) – a measure of an individual or family's relative economic and social standing – is an important social determinant of health. Since youth are not able to report on family income accurately, maternal education (student's mother's level of education) as reported by the student is used as an alternative measure for student's SES. According to Washington State Department of Health HYS analysis recommendations, SES is categorized as: "lower SES" if a mother has no post-high school education and "moderate - higher SES" if a mother has had any post-high school education.

Where noted, differences between groups or two time periods are provided for each indicator. Only differences that are statistically significant (unlikely to have occurred by chance) are identified with up or down arrows throughout the report. We used 95% Confidence Intervals to determine statistical significance. The 95% Confidence interval is the range of values that includes the true value 95% of the time. If the confidence intervals of two groups do not overlap, the difference between groups is considered statistically significant.

On page 10 differences in each indicator were not evaluated for statistical significance across surveyed years, meaning chance or random variation cannot be ruled out as an explanation for the percentage differences. School district participation in HYS varied across the survey years (2004-2012) which could produce potentially misleading conclusions about changes over time. Therefore, to standardize data presentation across all 19 school districts we only present statistical comparison of the most recent two survey years: 2010 to 2012.

The potential to detect differences and relationships (termed the statistical power of the analysis) is dependent in part on the number of survey respondents, or sample size. Differences that do not appear to be significant may become significant with a larger sample size.