The Jamaica Youth Survey: Assessing Core Competencies and Risk for Aggression among Jamaican Youth

Abstract

IntroductionTHERE IS GLOBAL INTEREST in promoting healthy youth development and preventing antisocial and problem behaviour during adolescence.1 Not only is positive development an important goal in its own right, linked to academic achievement and socioeconomic success,2 but many social and emotional competencies also decrease risk for antisocial behaviours that compromise individual health and development and exact costs for society.3 Among adolescent problem behaviours, rising rates of youth violence worldwide have been a particular cause for concern and are considered a major public health problem. Nowhere is this problem more severe than in the Caribbean region, where homicide rates for this age group are among the highest in the world.4 Within the Caribbean, the highest documented homicide rates are in Jamaica, at approximately 60 per 100,000 islandwide, rising to 140 per 100,000 in inner-city communities of Kingston, the capital city.5Focusing on Jamaica, these high rates of violence, particularly among youth, have been accompanied by repeated calls to develop and implement effective programmes. International donors, governmental ministries, health systems, and non-profit agencies have pushed for the development of empirically supported programmes and policies to prevent and mitigate aggression and violence from the early years through adolescence and beyond. There is a clear need for greater monitoring and evaluation of programmes which target youth, and a policy mandate to this effect might be useful. However, to date, the majority of available programmes have not been carefully evaluated, making it difficult to differentiate programmes that are popular and/or garner media attention from those that demonstrate evidence of effectiveness. In Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, there has been relatively little progress in developing coordinated responses to youth violence prevention and conducting rigorous scientific studies of programme outcomes.An important first step in building capacity for this type of evaluation is to develop a reliable and valid youth self-report assessment tool to measure risk and to establish programme impact. This includes long-term impact on aggressive and violent behaviours as well as short-term effects on proposed mediators of change, that is, those attitudes, skills and beliefs that are targeted directly by the intervention because of their association with aggression and violence. Further, given that many youth violence prevention programmes emphasise positive youth development, these mediators should reflect core competencies for positive development that are protective against youth violence and also lead to productive engagement in society, greater health, and enhanced well-being.There is debate regarding the relevant contributions of various factors within youth development, especially as regards antisocial behaviour, and about interventions which can improve outcomes.6 We do not review that literature here, rather we underscore the need to have in place an instrument which has been shown to be valid and reliable within the cultural context in order to properly assess both contributing factors and interventions in a systematic and repeatable way. The present study reports on the development and validation of the Jamaica Youth Survey. This survey was developed as part of a project funded by the World Bank to evaluate individual-level programmes for promoting well-being and preventing violence among teenage boys and girls (ages 12-18 years) in Jamaica. Short-term outcomes included five core competencies for healthy development that have been linked empirically with aggression and violence (described below) and that typically are targeted by community-based positive youth development and prevention programmes. Long-term outcomes emphasised distinct types of aggressive and violent behaviour and aggressive propensity (intent to behave aggressively). All items and scales were modified from previously validated instruments. …