Welcome to the Youth Safer Communities 2026 Survey! Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.
Informed Consent
Purpose
The purpose of this survey is to understand the current views that youth ages 9-21 have of their own safety and well-being in their communities. This survey contains questions about your relationships with adults, other youth your age, mental health, overall sense of well-being, bullying, conflict, and identity. Synergy and partners in Chestermere, Langdon, and South East Rocky View County (SERV) will use the findings from this survey to make changes that improve your experiences of safety and well-being in your community. The survey should take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.
Voluntary Consent
Completing this survey is entirely voluntary. You can choose to answer all questions or skip any number of questions you do not want to answer. If you need to take a break, you may either pause the survey or ask your teacher to leave the room. Your choice to complete/not complete this survey will not affect your ability to access any community resources, programs, or services.
Potential Risks
There are minimal risks to completing this survey, and we are taking steps to reduce them.
1. Confidentiality: As you will be completing this survey in a room of peers, others may be able to identify that you completed this survey. To minimize this risk, we will remove your name and any other identifying information from the data and results will be reported at the group level (for example: youth in Grades 5-9 felt that their community has a nice park)
2. Psychological/emotional distress or fatigue: This survey includes potentially sensitive questions. To minimize this risk, you are asked to only share experiences based on your comfort level. You may choose to skip questions or stop the survey at any time. This consent form also contains a list of low-cost/no-cost mental health resources that you can access, which will be provided again at the end of the survey.
3. Discover harm to yourself and/or others: If you share that you are planning to hurt yourself, someone else, or are being harmed, we are legally required to take steps to help keep you and others safe. This may include sharing information with trusted adults (such as a school counsellor or Synergy staff) and following Synergy’s and the school’s safety protocols. This is the only situation where your confidentiality may be broken.
Benefits
There are benefits to participating:
1. A platform for youth to express their voice and advocate for changes in their community.
2. As the data will be used to create change in your community, you may directly benefit from the changes that are created based on the findings of this survey.
Low-Cost/No-Cost Mental Health Resources
A QR code and a link to a list of mental health resources will be provided at the end of this survey.