Recently I saw on CYC-Net a question about selection of child and youth workers, asking, “How we can do it? “ One way is to identify common attributes and interests of those who have been in the field a while.

Some years ago, recognizing commonalities among those I’d known and observed in the field, I came up with an easy questionnaire reflecting these observations. Several others added an item and it became a “rolling” questionnaire. At the time, I would distribute this one-pager at conferences and people would check things off. I actually collected quite a pile of responses. So the recent question about selection reminded me of this.

Both seriously — and whimsically (this is not exactly an instrument of the positivist, rational-empirical paradigm) — rather than rant from my Soapbox this month, I’ve decided to share this with you. Take it, enjoy, and see how you fare:

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Child and Youth Workers Questionnaire

You can print out this page, and if the attribute applies to you,
please check it off as Yes or No

    I like cats
    I have wanted to run a restaurant
    I like chocolate
    My walls have many things on them
    I have trouble sometimes with left-right discrimination
    I was brought up in a small, close neighborhood
     I like to make snow angels
    I have a pet
     I believe in higher order beings
    I come from a large family
    I carry things in bags
    I like to fix things or take them apart
    I have wanted to own a bookstore

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It’s the “yesses” that have it, of course.

Some of the previous results were most interesting. Amazing how many people agreed to having the difficulty with right-left discrimination. Not everyone liked cats, of course (some claimed more affinity with dogs) but still there seemed to be lots of feline friends among us.

What do you think? Any questions to add?