| School dropout has yet to be effectively measured in terms of the costs to an individual's social and emotional health and the long term social and financial costs to society in general. Traditional predictors of school dropout have focused largely on unchangeable factors such as socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and academic achievement which have resulted in limited impact on reducing school dropout rates.;This data analysis used a sample of 93 school dropouts and 429 non-dropouts from five high schools and three alternative Centres for Individual Studies that serve high school dropouts in central Ontario, Canada to examine the differences in health profiles of dropouts compared to non-dropouts. Psychosocial health was measured using the ADSI-E (Adolescent Development Screening Inventory for Education), an efficient and validated self report inventory that measures nine domains of health: Physical Health; Emotional Health; Behaviour Patterns; Social Competence; Substance Use (individual health outcomes); Family System; School Adjustment; Peer Relationships; Leisure and Recreation (institutional/contextual factors). In addition, the individual and institutional cluster domains were examined to investigate the relationship between these two cluster scores when comparing dropouts to non-dropouts.;One way ANOVA yielded significant differences across all domains with the exception of emotional health (p < .054) as well as highly significant differences in the institutional factors and individual health adjustment cluster scores. In addition, Pearson Product Moment correlation analysis resulted in high positive correlation scores between many of the domains.;The results of this study support the hypotheses that there is a significant difference in the health adjustment of school dropouts and non-dropouts and that institutional and contextual factors, and their impact on individual health outcomes, is more salient for dropouts.;Empirical data gathered and reported in this study may inform education reform policy as well as public health initiatives designed to promote school health through effective deployment of resources and the development and implementation targeted intervention programs to reduce the risk of school dropout. These interventions have the potential to reduce the risk of negative health outcomes in youth and the negative life outcomes associated with disengagement and school dropout. |
