Every two years, students across Washington state are asked to complete a survey that asks more than 200 questions about mental health, substance use and their home life. The biennial Healthy Youth Survey has been administered since 2002 and offers a closer look into the lives of students.
The survey is administered and tracked by the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
"OSPI uses results from the Healthy Youth Survey to make data-driven programmatic changes, apply for local and federal grants to support the work of school districts, and to inform our proposals to the state Legislature," OSPI spokesperson Katy Payne says by email. "Local school districts use the results to inform school-wide practices and curriculum."
Students in sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth grades are asked to fill out the survey, but that doesn't mean that there will be data for each grade. For example, in Spokane County, less than 40% of the enrolled high school seniors filled out a survey in both 2021 and 2023, so their information was not included in the results.
Here are some statistics that stood out from the 2023 survey.
12,431
The total number of sixth, eighth and tenth grade students in Spokane County.
OSPI keeps data on student enrollment in each school district in the state. However, since school district boundaries can cross county lines, it can be complicated (but not impossible) to understand how many students are in a county.
Thanks to the Healthy Youth Survey, every two years we get a peek into precisely how many students — within specific grade levels — are in the county.
Out of the more than 50,000 students that are enrolled in the county, 3,071 are sixth graders, 3,642 are eighth graders, and 5,718 are in tenth grade.
55%
Enrolled sixth, eighth and tenth grade students in Spokane County who took the survey.
Since the survey is optional, not all of the enrolled students completed it. Additionally, some students may only fill out certain questions, so many of the data points include the number of students who answered.
A little more than half of Spokane County's students in three of the grades targeted actually filled the survey out — 1,619 sixth graders, 2,193 eighth graders and 2,995 tenth graders.
According to the survey report, participation between 40% and 69% "may be representative of students in that grade." For the results to be considered "likely representative of students in that grade," there would need to be 70% or greater participation.
About 53% of the sixth grade students actually filled out the survey. Eighth grade students had the highest participation in the county at 60%. Only about 52% of students in tenth grade completed the survey.
Between the three grades, there were 128 surveys that were thrown out and considered invalid.
36.7%
Sixth grade students who reported being bullied.
More students in all three grades reported being bullied since the last survey was administered in 2021. In 2023, the percentage of sixth graders reporting bullying was three points higher, and it was six points higher for eighth graders. The percentage of tenth graders reporting bullying was less than one point higher.
In sixth grade, 36.7% of students reported being bullied, while 29.6% of eighth graders and 17.9% of tenth graders reported it.
Still, four out of five students in each grade reported feeling safe in school, which closely mirrors the results from the 2021 survey.
21.9%
Tenth grade students who reported trying marijuana at least once.
The survey asks students if they've ever used specific drugs and also if they've used those drugs in the past month. While just a sliver of students said that they've used drugs in the last month, many more admitted to trying them at least once.
More students reported trying drugs at least once in their life, increasing from about 17.5% of all surveyed students in 2021 to about 19.2% in 2023.
Older students also reported more usage, according to the survey results. The survey includes questions about alcohol, nicotine (cigarettes and vapes are separate questions), marijuana, heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamines and any other illegal drugs. Of these, three of the most popular drugs Spokane students reported using were alcohol, vape pens and marijuana.
Of the 2,542 tenth grade students who answered the question, about 42% said they've tried alcohol, and 24% said they'd used vape pens. Nearly 22% said they've tried cannabis, up two percentage points from two years ago.
24.1%
Sixth graders who reported seriously considering suicide.
A smaller percentage of students in the county reported thoughts of suicide than in the 2021 survey.
In 2021, 26.8% of sixth graders said "yes" when asked "Have you ever seriously thought about killing yourself?" That decreased to 24.1% in the most recent survey. The percentage of sixth graders who said they actually tried also dropped from 8.8% to 7.5%.
In the 2023 survey, 17.6% of eighth grade students said they had considered "attempting suicide" and 18.1% of tenth graders reported the same. Both grade levels saw a more than 3% decrease from the previous survey. About 15% of both eighth and tenth grade students also reported they had come up with an attempted suicide plan. ♦
