BROOKINGS – Results are back from a Search survey conducted on multiple Brookings School District grades earlier this year, the first such survey conducted in eight years.

Although there are indications of improvement in a lot of important areas pertaining to family life and students feeling supported, there are a lot of worrying indicators about students’ mental and emotional wellbeing.

The school district has done this survey five times in total, including this year’s survey: 1999, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2017.

The reason for the long gap between the last two surveys was because it was costly to do the survey and the data had stayed consistent, according to Mickelson Middle School Counselor Chad Adamson. The survey cost $5,221.50, with United Way providing a $3,000 contribution.

The Search survey consisted of 160 questions that examined students’ attitudes and behaviors. This self-reported survey of students from grades six through 12 is anonymous.

The results provide the district and administrators a snapshot in time, Brookings School District Superintendent Klint Willert said, and placing this information alongside past results means that the district can see trends in its student population.

Adamson explained that the Search Institute, which produced the survey, bases its surveys on “the 40 assets,” which are divided or categorized into two groups: external assets and internal assets.

“External assets are those positive developmental experiences that surround youth. It’s kind of what the community, the school district and families can put in a child’s life to help them be successful. The internal assets, another 20 of them, those are the young person’s own commitments, values and competencies,” Adamson said.

Areas of improvement

Some of the things that hamper student development of positive assets and exacerbate these issues are spending too much time alone at home, too much time spent watching TV, physical abuse, being a victim of violence in general and attending drinking parties.

In all five of these categories, however, Brookings students seem to be doing better than ever.

However, there is room for modernizing at least the questions related to watching TV given the prevalence of smart phones, tablets and the like.

On the topic of positive identity, 2017 saw consistent drops in all four categories: personal power (from 50 percent to 46), self-esteem (from 52.5 to 46), sense of purpose (from 64.5 to 59), and positive view of the future (from 76 to 72).

“We’re going to continue a lot of conversations with our high school staff and the Boys & Girls Club” to find ways to address those issues, Adamson said.

Depression, suicide attempts rise

Although rates of students participating in high-risk behaviors such as getting drunk, smoking or chewing tobacco, using illicit drugs or having sex are going down significantly, issues with depression and suicide have climbed higher than before.

Feelings of sadness or depression within a month of the survey peeked at grades nine through 11. Freshmen had the highest rate (25 percent of them), with the numbers slowly dropping from there (24 percent of sophomores and 22 percent of juniors).

This all leads to the next question: Have you ever attempted suicide?

The answer was yes for 22 percent of freshmen, 17 percent of seniors, 15 percent of sophomores and 14 percent of eighth-graders and juniors. That’s an increase from previous years for the freshmen and seniors.

And the number of females who have tried to kill themselves has increased more than males, who have seen very little change throughout the surveys.

Adamson said it would be helpful to share these numbers with other agencies to get a better grasp on what’s driving those numbers and how best to respond.

“If 22 percent of Hy-Vee employees or 3M employees were feeling that way, there’d be something done right away,” Brookings School Board President Randy Grimsley said.

It will also be important to get word to important adults in students’ lives, from parents to coaches, making sure that they know the warning signs of depression and suicide.

Male vs. female

Back on the topic of females’ perspectives, when compared to males, they had less of a feeling of personal power and control over things that happen to them (43 percent to males’ 50 percent), had lower self-esteem (38 percent compared to 54), lower sense of purpose (53 percent compared to 65) and a less positive view of their personal futures (70 percent compared to 74 percent for males).

All this means that the district might have to have a conversation about finding ways to address specifically female students and their needs.

Carrying weapons

Just as worrisome – and something that Adamson said, “We want to investigate a bit more” – is that more students have carried a knife or gun to protect themselves within the last year.

The survey question did not specify where they carried the weapons, whether in school or outside, only how often they carried such knives or guns to protect themselves: never, once, twice, three or four times, or five or more times.

In previous years, rates from eighth grade through 11 were relatively low: 9 percent of eighth-graders in 2006 and 2009, 7 percent of freshmen in 2006 and 11 percent in 2009, 5 percent of sophomores in 2006 and 7 percent in 2009, and 6 percent of juniors in 2006 and 8 percent in 2009. But in 2017, those numbers increased to 13 percent of eighth-graders, 17 percent of freshmen, 15 percent of sophomores, and 13 percent of juniors.

These percentages reflect all answers to the question that indicated carrying a knife or gun once or more.

In order to see positive changes there, it might take providing other means of letting students feel safer and more comfortable, such as installing safety phones as was done on South Dakota State University’s campus.

Outdated questions?

Some things that might appear to be a negative might simply be the victim of outdated questions. By the numbers, school engagement seemed to be about halved compared to the 2006, 2009 average, dropping from 66 percent to 37 percent.

But in the “school engagement” category, questions such as “Do you come to class with your books” were asked.

That kind of question could be problematic because “most of our classes are moving online. We went to 1:1 computers at the high school, so the question is a little bit outdated and not necessarily a concern,” Adamson said.

Similarly, when asked if they spent one or more hours at night working on homework, 40 percent of students said they did, compared to 48 percent previously. This isn’t necessarily something to worry about because of changing approaches to homework, particularly because there’s less busywork than before.

Positive notes

There are positive things to note. In nearly every area, Brookings students feel more supported compared to the average 2006 and 2009 survey results.

Seventy-six percent of students feel their family is supportive, up by nearly 5 percent; 40 percent of students indicated they have positive family communication, up by 6 points; and 53 percent said they have positive relationships with other adults, which is up by almost 4 percent.

Student views on their family boundaries were also up, reaching 58 percent, 10 points higher than the 2006, 2009 average.

More students also claimed to have positive peer influences, going from 71.5 percent of students to 83 percent.

Adamson explained positive peer influences referred to “where they say their closest friends avoid risk-taking behaviors – so avoiding drinking, marijuana, having problems in school.”

There were also great marks of improvement in regard to positive values such as caring, equality and social justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility and restraint. What’s more, in addition to having significant increases in those percentages, the percentages for each were rather high themselves as well.

“We’ve always been a lot higher than the national numbers, so I was actually surprised to see that we had grown even more since a decade ago,” Adamson said.

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.