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…

High profile school shootings have served as pivotal events for developing policies to promote student safety. Although previous studies indicate that exposure to violence is associated with feeling unsafe at school and poorer academic and psychosocial outcomes, research on the relationship between widely publicized acts of school violence and…

The 2020 edition of "KIDS COUNT in Colorado!" examines the current state of preschool in Colorado--the need, the access, and the opportunity--as lawmakers consider expanding access to the Colorado Preschool Program and Governor Jared Polis calls for improved access to quality preschool statewide. This 27th edition of the annual focus on…

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 Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education" exposes students to examples of sociological research on schools, with a focus on the school as community. Now in its Third Edition, this engaging reader has broadened its scope even more, presenting additional readings in particular related to the sociology of higher…

The current study investigated the relationship between behavior management, traditional bullying, cyber-victimization, and several psychosocial consequences of cyber-victimization. Findings from previous research were used to specify a complex path model, which allowed the simultaneous estimation of multiple direct and indirect effects. Data were…

The University at Buffalo School of Social Work established the VISA Center (the acronym stands for "vision, integrity, service, and accountability") in collaboration with the school district of Buffalo, New York. With funding from the New York State Education Department, a university on-campus center was set up to serve 30 students at a…

The face-to-face confrontation involved in the crime of robbery renders vast amounts of financial, physical, and psychological injury in the United States. This study developed hypotheses from existing literature regarding salient situational factors associated with the prevalence of overt physical coercion during commercial and street robberies.…

As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan works with other Obama administration officials on policy responses to the shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, he brings a personal and professional history that has acquainted him with the impact of gun violence. As schools chief in Chicago from 2001 to 2008, he was affected by the gun deaths…

This timely book provides current research and skill-building information on Disaster Mental Health Counseling for counselors, educators, students, and mental health responders in agencies, schools, universities, and private practice. Recognized experts in the field detail effective clinical interventions with survivors in the immediate,…

The question of whether guns should be permitted on college and university campuses in the United States reflects the tension between two competing perspectives. America has both a robust gun culture and an equally robust (if less well known) gun-control culture. The gun culture is as American as apple pie: There may be as many as 300 million…

What has been left out of studying school violence and shootings is a comprehensive look at the culture that creates violence and the lack of support for those deemed "different" in an educational setting that promotes and rewards competition. If parents, teachers, and other adults associated with children were teaching the values of…

Active shooter is a term used by law enforcement to describe a situation in which a shooting is in progress and an aspect of the crime may affect the protocols used in responding to and reacting at the scene of the incident. Unlike a defined crime, such as a murder or mass killing, the active aspect inherently implies that both law enforcement…