U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Increase the proportion of adolescents who have an adult they can talk to about serious problems — AH‑03 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About the National Data  |  Methodology  |  History

About the National Data

Data

Data Source:  National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), SAMHSA

Baseline: 74.2 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years had an adult in their lives with whom they could talk about serious problems in 2021

Target: 78.4 percent

Numerator
Number of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who have an adult in their lives with whom they can talk about serious problems.
Denominator
Number of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years.
Target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
Target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
Target-setting method justification
Trend data were evaluated for this objective, but it was not possible to project a target because the trend started moving away from the desired direction in 2017 and 2018. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because it was a statistically significant improvement from the baseline.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health:

Numerator:
If you wanted to talk to someone about a serious problem, which of the following people would you turn to?
  1. There is nobody I can talk to about serious problems
  2. My mother or father or guardian
  3. My boyfriend or girlfriend
  4. Some other adult
  5. Some other person or persons
  6. Don't know/Refused

Methodology notes

Adolescents aged 12 to 17 are considered to have an adult in their life with whom they can talk about serious problems if they responded either (2) My mother or father or guardian or (4) Some other adult.

History

Comparable HP2020 objective
Retained, which includes core objectives that are continuing from Healthy People 2020 with no change in measurement.
Revision History
Revised. 

In 2024, due to the NSDUH adopting a multimode data collection method in 2021, the baseline was revised from 79.0% in 2018 to 74.2% in 2021. The target was revised from 82.9% to 78.4% using the original target-setting method.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.