CHART Lab

School Administrators and Staff

Collaboration with teachers, principals, district administrators, and other school staff makes YDI delivery possible. Please see the information below if you are considering delivering the YDI in your school.

After piloting the YDI in four waves of data collection, the YDI is now available to all school districts across the province. If you are interested in bringing the YDI to your district, please feel free to review the following resources and to reach out directly.

Youth who establish healthy social, emotional, mental and physical behaviours in early life are  much more likely to achieve academic success and other positive developmental outcomes.  Our team has created the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), a survey of Grades 10 to 12 students, to identify which resources, opportunities, and practices set youth best up for success in  adolescence and adulthood. As researchers at SFU, the UBC Human Early Learning Partnership  (HELP-UBC), and the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), we have built the YDI in collaboration with school administrators, teachers, healthcare providers, policymakers, community partners, and young people themselves. 

We have adapted questions from HELP-UBC’s Early (Kindergarten) and Middle Years (Grades 4, 7) Development instruments regarding social and emotional learning, physical and mental well-being, social well-being, and school experiences. We have also included a slate of new questions to account for the fact that note that Grades 10 to 12 students are assuming more responsibility in their everyday life, for their health, and for their future, as well as that this comes with a new set of challenges. 

For example, we ask students about peer relationships, extracurricular experiences, health behaviours and experiences, knowledge of and comfort with health services inside and outside of school, civic values, civic engagement, thoughts about society, and their plans and concerns for the future. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are also checking in with students about changes in their physical, mental, and social wellbeing, along with strategies they’ve used to cope with challenges during this period.

To learn more, take a closer look at the YDI survey.

As our goal is to create actionable findings to improve your students’ well-being, each year of survey delivery, participating districts will receive district and school-level reports 2-3 months after the YDI survey is delivered. In the long-term, YDI results will complement data from the BC Student Learning Survey and BC Adolescent Health Survey by comprehensively linking important outcomes such as high school graduation to students’ experiences in school, their life at home and in their communities, and other data on their physical and mental well-being.

We work closely with participating schools to complete the following steps to ensure delivery takes place smoothly.

 

To learn more, check out the sections below.

Distributing passive consent letters and tracking student withdrawals

At least 4 weeks before the YDI survey is scheduled, participating schools will distribute an  informed passive consent letter to parents of eligible students. This letter will ensure that parents have full knowledge of the YDI project, how the YDI survey will be delivered, and how YDI data  will subsequently be used. Within those 4 weeks of receiving the letter, parents may withdraw their children from participation in the project by completing and returning a slip attached to the  base of the letter, notifying their child’s teacher or school administrative staff, or contacting the  research team directly at ydi@sfu.ca. Participating schools will remain in close contact with the  YDI research team during this time to communicate student withdrawals.

Uploading students lists to eYDI website

To link students’ YDI responses to other data, participating schools will provide the YDI research  team in the month before delivery with an extract from the MyEducationBC database containing pre-specified information on eligible students. To facilitate this process, we have created a secure website available at e-ydi.ca and comprehensive instructions which school staff may use to remotely upload student lists. We will promptly remove students’ information  from this list as we receive student withdrawals. 

Planning and administering YDI Delivery

A survey administrator(s) will be designated amongst staff at participating schools. The administrator will work closely with the YDI research team to prepare for YDI delivery by helping teachers plan how to fit the YDI into normal class activities and by arranging appropriate space  and equipment. On the date of YDI delivery, the survey administrator will follow detailed  instructions to introduce and assist students in completing the survey. 

Please free to reach out to our team directly with questions, feedback or concerns on our Contact Us page. We look forward to hearing from you!