Data in dialogue - risk and protective factors for children and youth

The report Risk and protective factors - what do we know and what can we do to affect them? is available (in Swedish only), in the DIVA database. Background materials such as references vetted and source code to create the figures (Sankey diagrams) in the report, can be downloaded from a project page on the Open Science Foundation website: https://osf.io/935b6/. All materials, including the report, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which means that it is free to share, use and develop in any way, including commercially, as long as credit is given by referencing the report.

We are currently working on the measurement of risk and protective factors, where the Stockholmsenkät ("Stockholm questionnaire") has a central role. It is conducted every two years in collaboration with schools (pupils age 15 and 17) in the Stockholm area. Extensive work has been done to analyze the psychometric properties of the indices and items in the questionnare, to evaluate which of them can be used to represent relevant risk and protective factors. This has been done based on a dataset with biannual data from 2006 to 2020, and a total number of respondents of approximately 107 000 anonymous youths. The full analysis reports will be made public by the end of 2022.

Psychometric analyses are conducted primarily using Rasch Measurement Theory, which is a form of modern test theory.

In addition to the "Stockholm questionnaire", we are mapping out other possible data sources and indicators for measuring risk and protective factors, especially those relevant for ages under 15.

During the fall/winter of 2022 we are also developing an online interactive data visualization application, which is built using open source tools (R Shiny). The source code for the application is freely available: https://github.com/pgmj/did

Another form of data vizualisation developed during the project is an automated report using the open source publication tool Quarto. This enables HTML and PDF reports where each municipality can have a report document customized. The source code is freely available: https://github.com/pgmj/DIDreport

The visualization application will be a part of Data in Dialogue, which is a toolbox in development by the County Administrative Board of Stockholm, who are funding RISE's work and leading the project. Data in Dialogue will be used in collaboration with Swedish municipalities to support their work with health promotion and prevention to improve the well-being of children and youth.