School violence, and particularly, school shootings, remain a serious concern among parents, community members, educators, and governmental leadership at the local, state, and national levels. While school shootings periodically dominate media coverage of school safety issues, schools are among the safest places for students in the community. This…

Since 2005, bullying, school violence, and school safety literatures have expanded dramatically in content, disciplines, and empirical studies. However, despite this massive expansion of research, there has also been a surprising lack of theoretical and empirical direction to guide efforts on how to advance basic science and practical applications…

The Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is administered by the Montana Office of Public Instruction every two years to students in grades 7 through 12. The purpose of the survey is to help monitor the prevalence of behaviors that not only influence youth health, but also put youth at risk for the most significant health and social problems…

Using data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), this report presents findings both on crime and violence in U.S. public schools and on the practices and programs schools have implemented to promote school safety. SSOCS collects information from public school principals about the prevalence of violent and serious violent crimes…

The 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a survey of public schools and school districts in the United States. The CRDC measures student access to courses, programs, staff, and resources that impact education equity and opportunity for students. The CRDC has long provided critical information used by the Department of Education's Office…

The Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is administered by the Montana Office of Public Instruction every two years to students in grades 7 through 12. The purpose of the survey is to help monitor the prevalence of behaviors that not only influence youth health, but also put youth at risk for the most significant health and social problems…

Data from the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (2013), a nationally representative sample survey of students ages 12 through 18, were used to evaluate co-occurring reports of bullying and other unfavorable conditions at school. Analysis is restricted to those respondents who were enrolled in grades 6 through…

Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer ("International Journal of Developmental Science," v8, n1-2, p 3-24, 2014.) make an excellent contribution to the field in bringing attention to the social dynamics that underlie many homicidal attacks that have occurred in schools. By drawing on 126 cases reported in 35 studies, the authors are able to…

Jessie Klein begins her commentary on "Bullying, Romantic Rejection, and Conflicts with Teachers: The Crucial Role of Social Dynamics in the Development of School Shootings--A Systematic Review" (Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer," International Journal of Developmental Science" v 8, n1-2, p3-24, 2014) by saying that to…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS) has a long history of providing representative data on the nation's high school students. These assessments are crucial to CDC's mission of identifying health behaviors and experiences; understanding the determinants and co-occurrence of risks;…

The systematic review by Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer ("International Journal of Developmental Science" v8, n1-2, p3-24, 2014) includes 126 school shooting cases from 13 countries. This comprehensive review provides a valuable synthesis of a topic largely discussed in school shooting research: The role of bullying and peer…

Social support and social relationships are essential for psychological and physical health. Social rejection, on the other hand, is associated with increased stress and negative long and short-term consequences for a person's well-being. The long-term consequences of ostracism include the development of internalizing and externalizing psychiatric…

The Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is administered by the Montana Office of Public Instruction every two years to students in grades 7 through 12. The purpose of the survey is to help monitor the prevalence of behaviors that not only influence youth health, but also put youth at risk for the most significant health and social problems…

The authors begin their commentary by saying that looking at the phenotypical characteristics of a school shooting, which focus on the perpetrators' experiences in school contexts seems to be overdue. In spite of methodological problems, the studies involved in the review seem to paint a clear picture with regard to social ostracism and harassment…

The authors begin their commentary by saying that Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer (2014) did an admirable job of reviewing and integrating research on school shootings across a broad array of studies that relied on varied conceptualizations, operational definitions, coding strategies, and samples of shootings. The authors agree with Sommer et…