Blaine County Preparing for 2025 Youth Survey
- Sarah Seppa
- Oct 6
- 3 min read
It’s officially October and that means it’s time to start thinking about the next round of Blaine County's youth data collection with the Idaho Youth Well-being Survey!
This survey, offered in partnership with Communities for Youth, is an important part of our community’s upstream prevention work around youth well-being. The results help us make informed decisions about how to support our young people and also help us measure how well our current prevention efforts are working.
If you haven’t heard much about the survey or the Communities for Youth Boise Initiative in the past, please look through our data results from last year and look through some of the examples of how the data has been used in Blaine County.
We are currently preparing for Year 3 of the survey here in Blaine County and we are aiming for a participation rate of at least 65% among Blaine’s middle and high school students to ensure our data is as useful as possible. That means we need as many parents as possible to give permission for their child to participate. Key information is provided below.
2025-2026 Blaine Youth Well-being Survey
The survey will be offered in late October.
To give you child permission to participate, please ensure you have provided permission/consent.
If your child attends Blaine County School District contact Adam Johnson (ajohnson@blaineschools.org) to give consent or check consent status.
For other Blaine private and charter schools please contact your school leader.
Please note, students can still choose not to participate even if their parents have provided consent, providing parent consent does not force your child to take the survey.
General Youth Well-being Survey Parent Info
In accordance with Idaho law, youth participation requires parent permission (consent).
All surveys are 100% anonymous, no identifying information will be collected, and it is not possible to tie any answers provided to any individual student. All data is collected using a highly secure online system.
For the vast majority of teens, asking about “risky” behaviors (e.g., using/misusing substances like alcohol or tobacco, dating activity) does not persuade them to engage in those behaviors.
Prior research has shown that the vast majority of teens do not intentionally lie about behavior when taking surveys like the Idaho Youth Well-being Survey.
Questions on the Idaho Youth Well-being Survey have been purposefully worded in ways that minimize feelings of discomfort or stress. Any question that a young person does find distressing they are encouraged to skip.
If you have already provided consent for your child:
Thank you for your support of Blaine County’s upstream prevention initiatives! Please help us spread the word to other parents about the importance of the survey for Blaine’s young people. Some parents simply forget to provide consent, while others may not read through all the details and think the survey is just something “extra” their child doesn’t need to take part in. There are also some survey-related myths that other parents/guardians may be concerned about that you can use the “General Youth Well-being Survey Parent Info" above to assist with.
We encourage you to speak with your child about the survey. Key points include:
The survey helps school leaders and others create a more youth-friendly community.
Nobody is required to take the survey or to answer all the questions once they have started.
All surveys are 100% anonymous and cannot be used for any kind of disciplinary purpose (getting someone in trouble).
You can use our Youth video for assistance!
If you would like to learn more about the work the Communities for Youth Blaine County Initiative is doing, please contact Community Lead Sarah Seppa at seppas@slhs.org.
For more information on the Communities for Youth Boise Initiative, please visit our main page or sign up for our newsletter.
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