The practice of temporarily removing students from school as a form of punishment (i.e., suspensions) remains quite common. This study uses longitudinal data from a large, urban school district in California to assess whether the use of suspensions improves school safety in the following school year. Additional analyses by student race and…

This article examines the relationship between exposure to violence, fear of exposure to violence, and sexual risk among a sample of urban middle school youth. The sample included 911 seventh-grade students who completed self-report surveys. Approximately 20% of the sample reported at least one direct threat or injury with a weapon in the past 3…

School victimization is associated with negative social-emotional outcomes and risky behaviors. Most studies have provided definitions and measures of victimization, depicting a limited characterization of victimization in schools. More nuanced analyses of school victimization are needed to assess the heterogeneous pattern of victimization in…

Background: Multiculturalism has been purported to be supportive of positive youth development and outcomes. This study examined the relationship between perceived school multiculturalism--whether youth felt and thought that their school and teachers supported and provided activities for diverse intergroup interactions--and serious interpersonal…

The need for U.S. teachers to better understand School Violence Prevention is growing. Evidence suggests however, that 10 years and 10 billion dollars after the Columbine High School massacre, our public schools are not safer (www.community-matters.org). There has been an "after the fact" approach to the problem of school violence. After…

Latino youth in a low-income urban community are at high risk of exposure to violence. Given an accumulation of factors before, during, and after migration, immigrant youth might be at increased risk of exposure to violence and other relevant stressors (e.g., acculturation stress, language proficiency, acculturation/enculturation, and parental…

This study seeks to (a) identify and measure the lifetime exposure to community violence of 137 African American and Latino middle school students from a low income neighborhood and apply numerical weights to each violent event; (b) examine the relationship between the objective severity of child self reported violence exposure and the child's…

This study examines various factors that contribute to assaultive behavior in school. We focused on the differences between youth whose behavior was not problematic and those who admitted to threatening, stealing from, or physically assaulting students, teachers, or staff. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to a random sample of…

In the United States, nearly two-thirds of all deaths among young people 10-14 years of age result from only five causes: motor-vehicle crashes (22.1%), other unintentional injuries (16.7%), cancer (12.9%), suicide (6.8%), and homicide (4.7%). Leading causes of illness and death in all age groups in the United States are related to the following:…