Putting Youth on the Map: A Pilot Instrument for Assessing Youth Well-Being

Abstract

Extant measures of adolescent well-being in the United States typically focus on negative indicators of youth outcomes. Indices comprised of such measures paint bleak views of youth and orient action toward the prevention of problems over the promotion of protective factors. Their tendency to focus analyses at a state or county geographic scale produces limited information about localized outcome patterns that could inform policymakers, practitioners and advocacy networks. We discuss the construction of a new geo-referenced index of youth well-being based on positive indicators of youth development. In demonstrating the index for the greater Sacramento, California region of the United States, we find that overall youth well-being falls far short of an optimal outcome, and geographic disparities in well-being appear to exist across school districts at all levels of our analysis. Despite its limitations, the sub-county geographic scale of this index provides needed data to facilitate local and regional interventions.

Screening Indicators for the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

“…Indicators for the defined subthemes and criteria of the SCDI framework were collected from seven peer-reviewed publications [13,[28][29][30][31][32][33], three book sections [22][23][24], five studies from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) specialized in CD research [8,10,14,27,34], as well as 14 reports from government-supported institutes [11,12,21,26,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] and 11 international databases established by government-supported institutions [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. For example, the reports and database of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) [50] and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) [45] were used as the key references of the theme safety.…”

Assessing Child Development: A Critical Review and the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

“…The literature review includes ten academic publications [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], eight works completed by the NGOs specializing in child development and well-being research [21,[26][27][28][45][46][47][48], as well as five reports provided by government-supported institutions [49][50][51][52][53]. In total, 23 studies are selected as references to identify relevant themes, subthemes and criteria.…”