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21 years of 14-15 year olds drinking

SHEU figures from 1985 show that more 14-15 year old males than 14-15 year old females consistently report drinking more than 10 units of alcohol ‘in the last seven days’.

Over the years, there has been around a 5% ± difference between the two groups with no overall trend.

Local birth control service

Since 1993 we have asked thousands of 12-15 year olds…”Is there a special birth control (family planning) service for young people available locally?”
Those replying ‘Yes’ show an upward trend (see chart below left).
Those responding ‘Don’t know’ show a downward trend (see chart below right).

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Social norms and SHEU surveys

SHEU has carried out lifestyle surveys with hundreds of thousands of young people for over 30 years and has explored the ideas around social norms. Alan Berkowitz has recently been promoting the idea that people's perceptions of social norms – that is, what you think other people are doing – are an important mechanism for enabling behavioural change.

Hi from Krasnoyarsk

We've just received a postcard from Angela and David who have been visiting the Institute for the Psychology and Pedagogy of Development (IPPD) at Krasnoyarsk, capital of the Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, Russia. We were privileged to meet Elena Federenko and colleagues on previous visits to England. Angela and David are visiting with old friends from Dudley in order to explain more about Healthy Schools and learn more about their approach to health and social education. We look forward to hearing more from them on their return.

To Peter Griffiths on your retirement

David was recently privileged to attend a small invitation conference organised by Peter Griffiths, retiring head of PSHE at OFSTED. Peter was at his vigorous, generous best, and we welcome the appointment of Margaret Jones to the post. We look forward to her first visit to us in Exeter.

Ruth Joyce OBE retires...

Ruth Joyce has recently retired as Manager of the UK Drug Education Research programme 'Blueprint' at the Home Office.
Ruth is pictured (right) at a presentation at the House of Lords with Baroness Doreen Massey.

Homophobic bullying

For some months, SHEU have been collaborating with the lobbying organisation, Stonewall on a piece of research into young people's experiences of homophobic bullying. The Stonewall survey was an opt-in survey of young people, conducted over the Internet. SHEU were pleased to be involved in this important research, although the findings were often very sobering.
In other work, we have some examples of findings about homophobic bullying from whole-population surveys in schools. For example, we have occasionally asked whether young people are being bullied for different reasons.

Vanessa Cooper

We were saddened to learn of the death of Vanessa Cooper.

Vanessa was such a warm and positive personality. Our thoughts are with her family, of course. She will also be greatly missed by the wider group of people who knew her in the PSHE community.

Nearly 100,000 young people surveyed in 2006

A record breaking year for SHEU. We have worked with over two dozen local authorities or PCTs who carried out surveys in 2006. The combined figures from our online and paper-based healthy lifestyle surveys have nearly doubled our previous record total of over 54,000 in 2000. There are a number of reasons why we are seeing more young people being surveyed. Results of our local surveys are compared with SHEU's unique databanks drawn from a broader locality. The commissioning authority is provided with a powerful resource for planning health improvement programmes.

Healthy Colleges - are they infectious?

The first UK National Healthy Colleges conference took place February 27th. SHEU presented the results of the online survey with 6th Form and FE Colleges and discussing how colleges can use the data to inform their healthy college programmes. Another development over the past 14 months has been the steady increase in the number of people joining the monthly Healthy Student News email. One recent addition to the digest about young people's health and behaviour presented research into sexual behaviour.

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