Profiles Methods

Sampling

School Health Profiles (Profiles) uses random, systematic, equal-probability sampling strategies. The goal is to produce, in each jurisdiction, representative samples of schools with students in grades 6–12. In most jurisdictions, the sampling frame consists of all regular secondary public schools, with one or more grades 6–12.

Data collection

For the 2022 Profiles cycle, all 44 states and 28 districts included in Profiles Explorer began data collection in sampled schools. Collection began during the 2022 spring semester. However, several jurisdictions continued data collection into fall 2022.

Participation in the survey was confidential and voluntary; follow-up telephone calls, emails, and written reminders were used to encourage participation.

For each middle or high school sampled, there was a self-administered questionnaire to be completed by two people. One questionnaire is for the principal; the other questionnaire is for the lead health education teacher. This is the teacher most knowledgeable about health education at the school. The principal designates the lead health education teacher, who then receives the questionnaire.

State, local, tribal, and territorial agencies had the option of conducting their survey using paper-and-pencil questionnaires or a secure web-based system. Both contained the same questions and content, and both were processed using the same procedures.

For hard copy questionnaires, both booklets were mailed to the principal by the state or local education or health agency.

The principal and teacher recorded their responses in the computer-scannable questionnaire booklets and returned them directly to the state or local education or health agency.

Respondents who had difficulty with the web-based system or who did not want to use it were offered paper questionnaires. These responses were then entered into the web-based system by the agency.

Data analysis

Data from sites with response rates of 70% or greater (separately for the principal and teacher surveys) were weighted to:

• Reflect the likelihood of principals or teachers being selected.
• Adjust for differing patterns of nonresponse based on school size (large, medium, small) and school level (middle school, other).

This weighting process produced data representative of all public secondary schools in each jurisdiction.

For sites with response rates below 70% for either the principal or teacher survey or both, CDC conducted nonresponse bias analyses. These analyses examined whether responding schools differed from nonresponding schools on the following variables available from the sampling frames:

• School enrollment size (small, medium, large).
• Grade level (middle school, junior/senior high school, high school).
• School type, if the site included schools besides regular public schools in their sampling frame (such as charter schools).

To obtain auxiliary variables that could be used to compare responding and nonresponding schools, school addresses were geocoded to Census Tract. Geocoded coordinates were then used to determine the school's locale type from the National Center for Education Statistics (city, suburb, town, rural).

The following variables from ACS were examined for each site:

• Population density.
• Percent of population in each racial/ethnic group—White, Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic, some other race, two or more races.
• Percent of population below poverty level.
• Percent of youth ages 5–17 below 100% poverty level.
• Percent of population with a minimum of high school education.
• Percent of population with a college degree or more.
• Percent of households without a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
• Percent of households with Internet access.
• Percent of households with broadband Internet access.
• Average median household income.
• Percent of owner-occupied housing units.
• Percent of households on public assistance.
• Percent of population with Medicaid coverage.
• Percent unemployment.

Sometimes a site’s survey (principal or teacher) had few significant differences between responding and nonresponding schools for the frame and auxiliary variables. In those instances, data from that survey were weighted to be representative of public secondary schools in the jurisdiction. Only sites with representative data are included in Profiles Explorer. SAS software was used to compute the weighted estimates and confidence intervals provided in Profiles Explorer.

Profiles Explorer includes nationwide estimates

To calculate the nationwide estimates:

• Data from regular public secondary schools were combined across all participating states plus the District of Columbia.
• This includes those without representative data, and state-level final weights were aggregated.

To calculate the final state-level weights:

• The sampling base weights were adjusted for nonresponse.
• The nonresponse-adjusted weights were scaled to the state population size of all regular public secondary schools, based on school size and school level.