The Center for Disease Control announces the award of a grant studying the factors that lead to positive and negative social development in students:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded a $900,000 grant to researchers at the University of Georgia for a three-year study of high school students to help identify factors that lead to positive social and academic development, as well as factors that may contribute to aggressive behaviors and school dropout...The new study, called "Healthy Teens," is a continuation of a previous grant that followed the same students through middle school. "Healthy Teens" will study factors that protect students from violence-related behaviors, including aggression toward peers, delinquency, dating violence, weapon carrying, drug and alcohol use, suicide thoughts and attempts, and school dropout...
The study will require that: the high school students to complete a computer survey every spring for the next three years; teachers complete a standardized and nationally-normed student behavioral rating; data be collected on student attendance, standardized test scores and discipline records; interviews be conducted with students who drop out of school; and focus groups are conducted with students to better understand the meaning of violence-related behaviors and of protective factors.
I wonder how brave the researchers will be in reporting any data that aren't politically correct (for example, if girls turn out to be worse bullies than boys, or if sexual harassment isn't related to poor performance, or if racist bullying occurs less often in white students than for other groups)? And I wonder if this research will miss the homeschooling revolution entirely and fail to notice if homeschooled youth are protected from some of the more obvious negative social influences?
Posted by kswygert at October 18, 2005 10:47 AM