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Anyone who follows statistics knows they can end up distorted. They often end up misquoted and misinterpreted. So please take any statistical finding, including those from FYI, with a grain of salt.
With that caveat, I am intrigued by this list of various risk behaviors for ninth-twelfth graders broken down by ethnicity from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Whether your ministry or family is just one race, or a mixture of a few races, this sort of data can help us think about the unique challenges of the teenagers we know.
Trackback URL: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2009/10/risks-by-ethnicity/trackback/
October 20th, 2009 at 7:52 am
How about this Ohio State study that shows church participation actually increases the probability of depression among Asian American and Latino youth? Disturbing given that Asian Americans already suffer much higher rates of depression than other ethnicities (although the CDC didn’t include us in their analysis).
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/racerelig.htm
October 20th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Dear Danny,
I wasn’t aware of that research. Fascinating. Thanks for sharing it with us. I thought this quote was particularly interesting:
“Setting all other factors aside, the results suggest that participating in religion at high levels may be detrimental to some teens because of the tensions they face in balancing the conflicting ideals and customs of their religion with those of mainstream culture…”