SURVEY SAYS: NOT ENOUGH STUDENT DATA

PROVO -- Like any field general, Stephen Allred knows you can't win a
war without good intelligence.

Allred, program manager for youth and family services in the Utah
County Division of Human Services, said health officials aren't
getting the data they need to fight drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse.
Allred said a state law requiring parental permission for surveys is
hampering the information-gathering process.

"It doesn't give us accurate pin-point information we need because we
cannot survey enough students," Allred said.

But Gayle Ruzicka, Utah Eagle Forum president, said the law is doing
what it should and pollsters should be getting enough kids to have an
adequate sample.

Utah state law requires parental permission for a child to
participate in a school survey. If there is no permission slip turned
in, the child cannot participate.

The law was intended to protect children from participating in
surveys where they could be identified or would reveal what might be
considered personal information.

Steven Bahr, who teaches sociology at Brigham Young University, said
the number of parents who actually say no is small. The majority do
not bother to turn in the form, as he found when doing a substance
abuse survey in 1997.

"It took a tremendous amount of time and state money to follow up and
get the parents' permission," Bahr said. He eventually got an 80
percent return on the survey.

Allred said some schools only have 30 percent of their students
participating in a survey. Allred said a survey needs at least 60 to
70 percent participation to provide an accurate reading. Higher
numbers increase the accuracy.

Allred said he can give fairly accurate reports on Utah County's
overall drug use among teens, which he said is the lowest in the
state, but he can't go further than that.

With a better survey, Allred said he could show where the hot spots
are in the county and provide programs to address it.

"There are different problems in Spanish Fork and Lehi than there are
in Provo," Allred said. A finer, more accurate survey would show
parents that substance abuse is a problem in their community and
alert them to what drugs are available and treatment programs that
can help.

But Ruzicka said pollsters don't need to have a survey filled out by
every single student to know what is happening.

"They don't have to have all the children. They don't even survey 100
percent. They don't even survey 50 percent," Ruzicka said. "They get
way more than they need."

Ruzicka said it is important that parents give permission for
children to take part in surveys.

"I think when they are asking people questions, they are going
through their minds. A survey deals with how people feel and their
personal life," Ruzicka said.

Ruzicka said schools have no problems getting permission slips from
parents for class trips, so a survey should not be a problem either.

Bahr said a better solution is to have "passive permission." Under
that system, it is assumed that the child has permission to
participate unless the parents say otherwise.

But efforts to implement such a law run afoul of ultraconservatives
who say surveys violate parents' rights or may inspire children to
take drugs.

In 2000, then-Sen. Robert Montgomery attempted to change the law to
one of passive permission. The North Ogden Republican's bill would
have also required surveys to be screened by a committee that
included parents and made the document available for parental review.

Montgomery's bill passed in the Senate but died in the House Health
and Human Services Committee.

"We are not trying to undermine parental authority. We are trying to
help parents," Allred said. "It takes a whole community to raise a
child."

Ruzicka disagrees.

"They wouldn't do that if they were taking the kids to the zoo or
California," Ruzicka said. "They can't have it one way one time and
another way another time."