Theories often assume that schools in communities with high violence also have high rates of school violence, yet there are schools with very low violence in high violence communities. Organizational variables within these schools may buffer community influences. Nine "atypical" schools are selected from a national database in Israel.…

The current study presents the prevalence of students' reports of perpetration of violence toward peers and teachers among 16,604 7th- through 11th-grade Jewish and Arab students in Israel and examines the individual and school contextual factors that explain students' violence. The study explores how students' reports of violence are influenced…

The present study employed an ecological perspective to examine the relative predictive power of individual and school contextual factors on weapon carrying at school. The study is based on a nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in Grades 7 through 11 in 162 schools across Israel. Hierarchical logistic modeling examined the…

Presents a model for monitoring school violence locally and linking national, district, and school level data, illustrating its application in a project site in Israel. Examples of reports generated to monitor school violence for the district as a whole and for each site are presented. The article concludes that this is a feasible and useful model…

Reports findings of national survey on school violence in Israel. Revealed high rates of violence in all areas and among all age groups, but relatively higher rates of low-level violent behaviors and lower rates of more severe violent events. Reports on age-related, gender, and cultural differences; discusses social workers' roles in shaping…

The study reported in this article is based on a nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in grades 7 through 11 in 162 schools across Israel. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the differences between Jewish and Arab schools in the relationships between school-level variables--socioeconomic status (SES) of the…

Much of the research literature on school violence has focused narrowly on individual characteristics of troubled youth, without careful examination of contextual factors that might influence violence and victimization in school settings. This study examines the associations among Student Participation in Decision-Making in their Schools, Teacher…

Examined the effects of awareness of peers' risky behaviors on elementary students' experiences of school victimization. Surveys of Arab and Jewish students indicated that students' awareness of risky peer behaviors in school was one of the strongest predictors of their own personal victimization at school, controlling for gender, ethnicity, and…

This inquiry explores variables that predict elementary school students' fear of attending school due to school violence and their overall judgments of school violence as a problem. Using a nationally representative sample (Israel) of 5,472 elementary-school-aged children, this study tested the hypotheses that: (a) young students' personal fear…

Examined how risky peer group behaviors at school impacted junior high students' experience of victimization, extending findings from an earlier study of elementary students. Surveys of Arab and Jewish Israeli junior high students indicated that risky peer behaviors in school were one of the strongest predictors of victimization in both elementary…