Breadcrumb
- Federal Resources
Federal Resources
You For Youth
This site helps youth professionals connect and share resources with colleagues, provide professional development and technical assistance opportunities, and offer tools for program improvement. The site provides information focused on afterschool programs.
Testifying in Court about Trauma: The Court Hearing
This tip sheet helps clinicians prepare to testify in court regarding trauma (PDF, 7 pages) and its impact on children. It provides insight into the different types of cases and tips on how to testify effectively.
American FactFinder
This U.S. Census website is a source for population, housing, economic, and geographic data.
Census Bureau
The Census Bureau site serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. It contains thePopulation & Housing Census collected every 10 years, the Economic Census collected every 5 years, the Census of Governments collected every 5 years, the American Community Survey collected annually, a number of Demographic and Econmic surveys, and Economic Indicators that are released on a specific schedule.
Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in the United States in 2013
Released by the Census Bureau, this report illustrates key indicators of poverty and family income. The report shows that the overall poverty rate fell 14.5% in 2013, and the poverty rate for people under age 18 fell 1.9% from 2012 to 2013, which is equivalent to 1.4 million young people lifted out of poverty.
School Enrollment: 2012
This newly released set of tables from the Census Bureau describes the characteristics of children and adults enrolled in school at all levels, by age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, nativity, and foreign-born parentage. A notable trend seen in the data is a drop in college enrollment (both undergraduate and graduate) by 467,000 students in fall 2012 from one year earlier.
Resource: Statistics in Schools
This website uses Census data to educate K-12 students about statistical concepts and data analysis. Developed by educators to correspond with relevant education standards, teachers can incorporate these free resources into geography, history, math, and sociology activities.
Share with Youth: Youth Speak Out: Shared Experiences Help Rural Youth Leaders Connect
This podcast, developed by the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, features rural youth leaders who were once homeless or in foster care offering advice on how to engage vulnerable rural youth.
ChooseMyPlate.gov
Choose my Plate offers personalized eating plans, interactive tools to help you plan and assess your food choices, and advice to help you make better choices.'
Stay Healthy at College With MyPlate On Campus
The MyPlate On Campus Initiative aims to spread healthy eating messages to college students to empower them to improve their eating and exercise habits and encourage their peers to do the same. MyPlate On Campus offers tools, such as a tracker that develops personalized nutrition and activity plans for users, and tip sheets on topics such as choosing healthy snacks and creative ways to exercise. Students interested in promoting wellness at their schools can become MyPlate On Campus Ambassadors and gain leadership experience while hosting fitness and healthy eating activities for their fellow students.
Resource: 2015 Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) Data
This resource includes 2015 BRFSS data and related information. The BRFSS is a state-based surveillance system that uses survey phone calls to collect information on risk behaviors, clinical preventive health practices, and health care access for adults 18 and older.
Report: Expenditures on Children by Families, 2015
This report presents the most recent estimates of expenditures by families on children annually across childhood and adolescence. The report indicates that a middle-income married-couple family will spend between $12,350 and $13,900 annually, or $233,610 from birth through age 17, on child-rearing expenses.
Upcoming Event: November is National Adoption Month
This observance aims to increase national awareness of the need for permanent families for children and youth in the foster care system. This year’s theme, “We Never Outgrow the Need for Family—Just Ask Us,” reflects a focus on the importance of identifying permanent families for the thousands of 15- to 18-year-olds in foster care who are currently less likely to be adopted or who may age out of the system without a stable home. A new tip sheet, Talking with Older Youth About Adoption (PDF, 2 pages) provides child welfare professionals with a framework for how to talk with older youth about permanency and includes suggestions for how to make these conversations more effective.
Bullying, Sexual, and Dating Violence Trajectories From Early to Late Adolescence
This report describes a longitudinal study of 1,162 high school students that examined the impact of family abuse and conflict, self-reported delinquency, and peer delinquency on the development of bullying perpetration, sexual harassment perpetration, and teen dating violence perpetration.
Changing Lives: Prevention and Intervention to Reduce Serious Offending
This bulletin provides a review of effective early childhood, juvenile, and early adulthood programs that mitigate risk factors for delinquency and have demonstrated measurable impacts on offending (PDF, 8 pages). These programs are grouped by family, school, peers, and community, individual, and employment.
Changing Course: Preventing Gang Membership
The NIJ and CDC have jointly published a book that uses current research and evidence on youth gang involvement to form recommendations for policymakers on the effective use of taxpayer dollars in gang membership prevention. Each chapter includes an interview with a practitioner and highlighted policy implications.
Criminal Career Patterns
The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Criminal Career Patterns" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin describes criminal career patterns in adolescence and adulthood.
Explanations for Offending
The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Explanation for Offending" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin examines various developmental, biological, social, and psychological explanations for offending.
National Institute of Justice
NIJ is the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is dedicated to researching crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the state and local levels.
Prediction and Risk/Needs Assessment
The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Prediction and Risk/Needs Assessment" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin explores predictions of young adult crime from juvenile histories and assessments of risk, needs, and protective factors.
Teen Dating Violence: How Peers Can Affect Risk & Protective Factors
This brief (PDF, 24 pages) draws on NIJ-funded research, as well as broader literature, to illustrate the ways teens shape each other’s relationship experiences and decisions to enter and leave romantic relationships that turn violent.
Understanding Teen Dating Violence
In this interview, Dr. Peggy Giordano of Bowling Green State University describes her research on teen dating violence and how it changes over time. Dr. Giordana conducted a longitudinal study following 1,200 youth from age 13 into young adulthood and found conflict in key areas of a relationship can increase the risk of violence.
Child Trauma and its Effects: Implications for Police
This article describes child trauma and the negative impact it can have on development, and the implications this has for police, especially for those working in poor communities of color. The article also suggests police be trained on the high prevalence of severe childhood trauma in such communities, its effects on the developing child, and its impact on adolescent and adult functioning to increase their capacity to address this major public mental health issue.
Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults
This bulletin proposes new institutional methods and processes for young adult justice. The authors’ primary recommendation is that the age of juvenile court jurisdiction be raised to 21, with additional, gradually-diminishing protections for young adults up to age 24 or 25.
Report: Technology-Involved Harassment Victimization: Placement in a Broader Victimization Context
NIJ-supported researchers from the University of New Hampshire analyzed response data from 791 youth, ages 10-20, related to their experience with technology-involved harassment victimization (PDF, 28 pages). Results show that 54% of harassment was in-person only, 15% involved technology only, and 31% involved both (known as “mixed incidents”). Mixed incidents were more likely to result in overall negative emotional impact, while technology-only harassment incidents were among the least problematic and upsetting to youth.