Schools are basically safe places for children. School violence and disruption, although in decline through the mid- to late 1990s, remains a concern. National surveys that inform research, policy, and practice have been designed for different purposes and can present conflicting findings. Common standards of risk and harm that could advance…

Despite nationwide improvements in school safety, victimization at school continues and affects the well-being of a significant number of students. This study uses the California Healthy Kids Survey, a statewide surveillance instrument administered to students in grades 7, 9, and 11 in California (N = 70,600) to address the multiple victimization…

This article examines the conceptual basis for and methods used to assess school bullying, including the core bullying behavior elements of repetition, intentionality, and power differential and instruments needed to foster comparability across studies and to improve the precision of intervention capacity. Common bully self-report procedures…

Highlights of this special issue on bullying are presented. The compendium of research reviewed and data presented set the stage for future research to attend to issues of definition, measurement, longitudinal methodology, prevention/intervention, policy, and recognition of important contexts for the occurrence and maintenance of bullying…

Comparison of 388 students (grades 5 to 12) often victimized by school violence and 928 students rarely victimized found victims were more likely to be male, to perceive the school campus as unsafe, to have poorer social support networks with peers and teachers, to have pervasive distrusting attitudes about interpersonal relationships, and to be…

Introduces miniseries on school violence and safety by discussing prevalence of school violence and school violence findings. Presents methodological caveats in interpreting school violence data and examines issues of crime victimization, fighting and assaults, weapons, and homicide. (NB)

School violence became a topic of broad national concern in the United States in reaction to a series of tragic school shootings during the 1990s. Efforts to understand and prevent school shootings have stimulated the rapid development of a broader interest in school safety with an emerging multidisciplinary research agenda. The maturation and…

Reviews efforts to categorize anger-related patterns among youth and proposes an empirically derived typology for males based upon a multidimensional conceptualization of anger in school settings. Uses a two-stage clustering procedure to develop six anger preference styles that described a sample of 200 students in grades 6-12. (MKA)

This article reframes school violence in the context of educational mission goals so that teachers can understand their role in responding to it and acknowledge their skills in addressing it. The article examines types of violence that occur most frequently in schools, evaluates what is known about teacher preparedness, and encourages educators to…

Responses of 109 students who failed reliability or validity checks on a school climate and violence questionnaire were compared with those of a randomly matched group who answered consistently and accurately. Results indicated significant differences in terms of school violence victimization and perceived danger at school. (SLD)

This article explores psychometric characteristics of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBS), one of the most widely used instruments to assess the prevalence of violent and other high-risk behaviors in secondary school settings. Response patterns were analyzed for a subset of 414 youths who indicated that they had carried a weapon to…

Planning is essential to creating safe schools and it is required by the Federal No Child Left Behind legislation (U.S. Department of Education, 2004) and implemented via district local education action plans. The implementation of these plans involves continuous monitoring and reevaluation of information pertinent to each campus. As such, this…