Dane County Youth Assessment Data Analysis

The Dane County Youth Assessment (DCYA) is a web-based cross-sectional survey administered every three years to students in Dane County, the second largest county in Wisconsin with a population of 564,000. Members of the HOPE team partnered with Jennifer Jones, MSW, Chief Strategy Officer at Prevent Child Abuse America to analyze the data to explore the prevalence of protective factors, their relationship to the Four Building Blocks of HOPE, and their association with better mental health outcomes and lower rates of substance use among students, and in particular, students who identify as gender minority.

The project team found that all of the protective factors were associated with reduced reported depression and substance use, and all risk factors were associated with increased reporting of depression and substance use. Gender minority students were consistently less likely to report protective factor exposure and more likely to report experiencing risk factors. Additionally, they found that many of the protective factors were less effective in gender minority youth. This study highlights the importance of improving access to these important protective factors among gender minority youth.