The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) is a district-level data collection that enables districts to comply with Title IV Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) funding. The CHKS gathers data on behaviors such as physical activity and nutritional habits; alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; school safety; and environmental and individual strengths and assets. The CHKS is a part of a larger system of data collection on at the national, state, and local levels. The following descriptions provide links to these data collections.
District-Specific CHKS Results
Because the CHKS is designed as a local planning and evaluation instrument, the district initiates the survey and the results are returned to the district in the form of a Key Findings Report and a Technical Report. The Key Findings Report is a short summary of the CHKS data intended for public dissemination, while the Technical Report is a more detailed report of each item on the survey. Beginning November 1, 2005 and annually thereafter, the California Department of Education (CDE) and WestEd, the contractor for the CHKS, will post districts’ prior year Key Findings Reports on the WestEd CHKS Web site (Outside Source). Persons who are interested in district-level Technical Reports may contact the district office and ask to be referred to the Title IV SDFSC Coordinator. Some districts have a full-time coordinator; however, in many districts, this role is a part-time assignment. The district is required to use the data for program planning and evaluation; therefore, persons who are involved in the local planning and advisory process easily gain access to these data.
An additional source of district level-data is the Safe and Healthy Kids Annual Report. Under SDFSC and the Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) program, districts must establish performance indicators and goals for reducing the reported risk behaviors associated with these indicators. Beginning in the 2003-04 school year, these performance indicators are standardized on 12 indicators in the CHKS and district will report survey data at the end of the year on these 12 indicators. To gain access to the annual report, visit the Safe and Healthy Kids Annual Report (Outside Source) Web site.
County-Level CHKS Results
Many county office of education SDFSC/TUPE coordinators work with districts to administer the CHKS on the same schedule, making the generation of county-level reports possible. In several counties, partnerships have formed with county government agencies for additional survey items or custom survey modules that may be used for program planning in those agencies. Agencies interested in working with county-level data collection efforts should contact their county office of education SDFSC/TUPE coordinator.
State Comparison Data - The California Student Survey
The California Attorney General has been collecting data on student alcohol, tobacco, other drug use, and violence since 1985 through its California Student Survey (CSS). Beginning in 1999, the CHKS and CSS were aligned into a single data collection for long-term state trends and for comparison of district data with the state as a whole. To gain access to the CSS surveys, tables, graphs, and reports visit the California Attorney General's Crime and Violence Prevention Center (Outside Source) Web site.
National Comparison Data
A number of national data collections provide data that are comparable to the data collected by the CHKS. Links to these data collections are provided below.
- Monitoring the Future (Outside Source)
- Youth Risk Behavior Survey (Outside Source)
- National Youth Tobacco Survey (Outside Source)
