MCHB EPI Atlanta Conference
 
December 5 - 7, 2006

You've Got to Accentuate the Positive:

Research on Protective Factors for Child Well-Being

KRIS MOORE: Well, good morning and it’s really a good morning. I want to lead off our panel with a brief overview of indicators of child well being and note the word is well being.

UNKOWN SPEAKER: Kris, you don’t have your slide up. You don’t have (inaudible).

KRIS MOORE: I’m sorry. Sorry, a technical difficulty here. I don’t know why the slide isn’t coming up.

UNKOWN SPEAKER: I think you viewed that file.

KRIS MOORE: Thank you. Great. It’s a very cooperative group. I’m first going to provide some history on the topic. And second consider some background about conceptualizing and measuring positive indicators of child well being. And then third, suggest the measures of positive child well-being and several measures of positive child context.
First, history. Well, human history has gone on for a long time and only recently have humans tried to regularly measure and monitor how things are going. Health United States reports have only been produced for about three decades, and indicator reports about children are even more recent. Three reports on children were produced in the 1980s for the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. The first report was very short, but they quickly became longer and more complete. However data were only available at the national level. Well, GPRA became a force in the early 1990s, leading organizations at all levels to begin thinking about monitoring not just their inputs, but outcomes. And this has led people to think hard about what outcomes they’re trying to affect and how to measure things.

In 1994, the Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics was formed. And this brought together a number of federal agencies to think collectively about indicators of child well-being. In particular, having an interagency forum brought agencies together to consider the whole child. Not just child health, not just child education, not just drug use, not just adolescent pregnancy, all of the silos, but indicators about children more broadly. In addition, the assistant secretary of--her planning an evaluation produced a series of trends reports, again, at the national level. In 1997, the Interagency Forum started to produce “America’s Children”, an annual report on key indicators of children’s well being in the United States, which it continues to produce regularly.

The need for a broader array of state-level data became widely recognized. And Kids Count, I should mention that, was also part of this discussion. And in 2003, the first national survey of children’s health was conducted. And a second survey is now being planned for fielding in 2007.

Well in addition to a need for state-level data, there has been an ongoing call for more positive indicators; a call which led to a conference on indicators of positive outcomes in March 2003. This need was voiced by practitioners who were running programs, by researchers, and also by the Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. The reason is, the current stock of indicators that’s available to be included in America’s children, key national indicators of child well being, is pretty negative. Well, I should hasten to add that bad outcomes and bad context do matter for children. The negative development is very important. Indeed, there is some evidence that bad is stronger than good. For example, conflict, and violence, and abuse are extremely negative experiences for children and for adults as well.

Having said that--my grandson. It is critical to note that good outcomes matter as well. For example, positive social and emotional development is absolutely critical for children’s development. There are some important reasons why a focus on the negative is not sufficient. One is that it is good science to address positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes. Merely addressing problems fails to recognize the breadth of human development; both in terms of the context that foster positive development and in terms of the characteristics that constitute good development. There is an evolving research base that indicates, for example, that positive relationships in positive activities lead to better health and educational outcomes for children. Second, a number of surveys indicate that the public’s perceptions about children, and particularly adolescents, are extremely negative. Obviously, this reflects many forces. But I suspect that one of the reasons is that that is what we measure and report: crime, drug use, violence, et cetera. Good news is a decline in something negative.
I would suggest that we need to have a vision not just of what we want to squelch, but a vision of what we want for children. This might contribute to a more balanced public perception of children and adolescents.

 A third reason: are kids’ perceptions. Programs for children that are organized to stamp out the bad behaviors that adults don’t like are not very likely to attract children. Who would want to attend a program designed to focus on one’s failings and squelch out all of one’s problems? Children and adolescents, like anyone, want to participate in programs that identify their strengths, build on their abilities, and support their development. And a fourth reason is found in the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that some are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, we need to focus on positive outcomes not only because it is scientifically more balanced, and because it can contribute to a more balanced public perception of children, and because a positive vision would be more engaging to children and youth, but because it reflects one of the founding principles of our society.

I often hear criticism of positive measures like relationships and social skills that they are soft or squishy or gluey. However, positive constructs are not immeasurable. For example, missing data are minimal. For instance, measuring constructs such as social and emotional development is not squishy. The hardest thing actually to measure is income. Income is even harder to measure than sexual activity. We found in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1997 cohort that fewer than one percent of the respondents did not answer questions on parent-child relationships. This is much lower than the 13 and a half percent who did not answer questions on income.

In addition, positive indicators such as parent-adolescent relationships are regularly found to be related to better child development. For example, in our analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that adolescents who report they have a positive relationship with their mother--shown in red--are just 70 percent as likely to become sexually active, net of a series of controls, as adolescents who do not have a positive relationship with their mother. Similarly, adolescents who have a positive relationship with their mother--shown in the other far and right--are just 57 percent as likely to be behind in school, net of other factors.

Well, if we accept that positive outcomes are important and measurable, what might we consider as we select constructs to measure? Well one critical factor is to assess varied domains of development: on cognitive attainment and educational achievement, health and safety, and also social and emotional development. And measures are needed for varied age groups. Some, for example, it’s important to develop positive measures for preschool children--we generally define that as zero to five. Or elementary school ages six to 11, and high school ages 12 to 17. Thinking of age and domains together indicates it would be optimal to develop a number of positive measures. Some, for younger children in particular, would need to be parent report, while for older kids particularly teens, self-report would be optimal. One caution I want to note is the distinction between well-being and well-becoming. When the focus regarding children is on how they turn out as adults and citizens; how we’ve referred to that as well-becoming. Children’s current happiness and security and comfort are also important, and we refer to that as well being. With this background, I’m going to quickly share some of my favorite constructs of well-being.

As you will see, these measures cross several domains of child development. They’re not appropriate for children of all ages, but I wanted to put them forward as important and as rather under-measured constructs of positive child development. I should mention that I didn’t pick measures that are already quite widely available, but rather constructs that are suggested by research and practice as important to measure and monitor. School engagement beyond grades and drop out; the notion of that kids are interested in school and motivated to learn; that they try hard. Self-regulation is being able to control emotions and behavior such on quick anger. Social skills and confidence, social skills and social behaviors. Tolerance, the notion of accepting and working well with people of varied social, cultural and religious groups. And positive environmental behaviors, for example: using less energy, walking rather than driving, recycling.

And next are my top constructs for contextual measures of well-being, as I note at the outset, it is important to distinguish between measures of child well-being and measures of context. Often indicators like school characteristics, neighborhood, family, poverty and health insurance are suggested as measures of child well being. But measures of context are really quite different from measures of child well being. And we want to measure both. Context measures are inputs into child well being. Context is important in other words, but it is different. Therefore, each member of the panel will be suggesting both well-being and contextual measures. Mine are parent-child relationships and assessment of closeness, warmth, communication, trust. Out of school opportunities, for example: programs, lessons and sports during the out-of-school time hours. School supportiveness; teachers and staff who care and help students. Monitoring; knowing a child’s whereabouts, friends, teachers and their activities, and neighborhood cohesion, trust, health, safety and socializing with neighbors.

Thank you, very much.