Health and Well-Being of BC’s Adolescents

Profile of British Columbian Youth with Special Needs: A Descriptive Study using the British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey (BCAHS)

Principal Investigator: Dr. Jennifer L. Baumbusch

Co-Investigator: Dr. Jennifer E.V. Lloyd

Study Overview:

Most of the research with and about youth with special needs, particularly in Canada, either relies on small samples and/or is qualitative in nature. Although such research provides valuable in-depth insights into their experiences, there is little population-based research available, specifically about adolescents with special needs.

To address this gap, our study utilizes the McCreary Centre Society’s 2013 British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey (BCAHS) (https://www.mcs.bc.ca/ahs) data to address and answer key questions about the health and well-being of BC’s adolescents with special needs. Since 1992, the BCAHS has been administered across British Columbia every five years to over 168,000 adolescents in Grades 7 through 12, inclusive. It is designed to collect information about young people’s physical and emotional health and health risks, as well as factors standing to influence health during adolescence throughout the life course. BCAHS findings are used to inform health care planning and health promotion targeting BC’s adolescents.

The 2013 BCAHS data reveal that 26% of adolescent respondents self-reported as having one or more health conditions and/or disabilities. In addition to being able to analyze data collected from this large study population, an added strength of our research is that we explore adolescents’ outcomes both within and between the various categories of special needs included in the BCAHS – thereby providing useful and convenient resources for researchers studying particular categories of need or the broad spectrum of special needs.

Our substantive objectives are:

  1. To create profiles of the sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, immigrant status, language, family structure, and residential mobility) of BC’s adolescents with special needs;
  2. To investigate the substance use (occurrence of, consequences of, and reasons for) of BC’s adolescents with special needs;
  3. To explore the community lives (discrimination, community belonging, trusted adults, leisure activities, and friends) of BC’s adolescents with special needs.

Because the BCAHS involves complex samples data, our added methodological objective is:

  1. To create a step-by-step introduction to the analytic procedures required for SPSS’ Complex Samples module.

If you have any questions about our study, we welcome you to contact us via email at: spice@nursing.ubc.ca.