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MOST of US Revisited text by jackie mcelaney art by emily wang
Alarming misconceptions over the amount of perceived drug and alcohol use among teens and their peers surface in a revised drug and alcohol survey taken by Palo Alto students.
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very year, Paly students participate in a district-wide survey to measure the perceptions and uses of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs in the student body. Since 2004, the survey has been given to students at Palo Alto High School, Henry M. Gunn High School, Jordan Middle School, Terman Middle School, and Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School. This year, the survey was changed in response to the results of past years. “The whole idea behind it [the survey] is ‘What do most people do?’” Paly Guidance Counselor Susan Schultz says. This year, the title of the survey was changed from the MOST of Us Survey to the Palo Alto Reality Check Survey, the goals of which were slightly different. New questions were added to the survey, including those pertaining to drinking and driving, communication with adults, and binge drinking, according to the Paly PARC survey report. Becky Beacom, communications director at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and the person spearheading the PARC survey, said that the changes made to the survey were an attempt to track the perceptions and misperceptions students have of their peers regarding drug and alcohol use. “We find that students are overestimating the degree of [drug and alcohol] use [among their peers],” Beacom says. This overestimation was measured with new questions asking students what they thought the average drug and alcohol use was for their peers. According to this year’s survey results, nearly 80 percent of students do not drink in a typical month; however, more than half of the students surveyed estimated that many more of their peers drink each month. “Social norms are about holding things in context,” Beacom says. “We’re trying to grow the health that already exists in the community and shine a light on that.” According to the survey, this misperception on how much Paly
students really do drink has allowed for an increased risk of alcohol use among students. Beacom says the misconceptions of students are the most prominent issues, and believes in the validity of the responses. “When all the important steps for assuring confidentiality, anonymity, etc. have been met, and we have five years of consistent data [at all schools], I am surprised at how many people still dismiss thousands of student voices with the perception that ‘everybody lies,’” Beacom says. While the survey results show that students’ perceptions of their fellow peers are slightly skewed, Beacom says that, in general, students are honest in answering the questions. “I believe most teenagers are honest — inherently so,” Beacom says. “Just as most teenagers make healthy decisions, follow the rules, etc. And there’s science to back that up.” With the extensive filters used on the survey, Beacom feels very confident that the survey results portray the true feelings of the students at Paly. While Montana State University’s MOST of Us project provided extensive analysis for the surveys of past years, this was the first year that the Palo Alto Reality Check Survey was analyzed by local data specialists. “The fact that we had independent professionals creating and hosting the surveys, analyzing the results, providing the filters, etc., makes me feel as confident as possible in the reliability of this data,” Beacom says. However, the filters cannot be 100 percent effective, and this year, along with other years, there may have been answers that made it through the filtering process. “Did some dishonest responses get through the filters? Probably,” Beacom says. “But probably in similar amounts to previous years. This is why we’ve been told not to read too much into small differences in the ‘numbers’ either from year-to-year or when we look at differences between the schools.” v verde magazine 19