School Violence Victimization Among Secondary Students in California: Grade, Gender, and Racial-Ethnic Group Incidence Patterns

Michael J. Furlong University of California,

Santa Barbara

Richard Morrison Ventura Unified School District

Ventura, CA

Michael Bates & Annie Chung University of California,

Santa Barbara

Abstract: During the past seven years, secondary schools in California have used the California School Climate and Safety Survey to evaluate violence victimization on their campuses and to help guide their school safety planning efforts. Sufficient information has now been gathered to provide educators with normative information about school violence victimization in California. This paper examines victimization patterns for a sample of 7,534 students in grades 7 to 12 attending 18 different junior or senior high schools in southern and central California. Past-month incidence for 21 violence types is provided. Results show that in a given month the typical student reported experiencing 3.96 types of victimization at school. The most predominate forms of victimization were verbal in nature: cursing and teasing, reported by more than one half of the students. About one third of students reported having personal property stolen, seeing a student with a knife on campus, or having someone try to intimate them by staring them down. Male, junior high, African American, and Native American students reported the highest rates of violence victimization.

The aim of National Education Goal 7: Safe and Drug-Free Schools (National Education Goals Panel, 1995) is to decrease the incidence of violence in America's schools to zero by the year 2000. This laudable objective is being pursued by numerous schools through the implementation of comprehensive safe school plans, crisis response programs, peer mediation programs, and conflict resolution training, among other strategies. As educators seek to reduce violence on their cam­puses, they often operate with limited informa­tion about the actual incidence of school violence. As a result, prevention and intervention programs have been implemented with limited baseline data against which to e,;,aluate programmatic outcomes. The implications of this condition recently became more important because Title IV school violence prevention programs funded by the 1994 Improving America's Schools Actl

(Sections 4001,40002,4003, and 4117) require that strategies used by schools be supported by em­pirical evidence of effectiveness both prior to implementation and to justify continued funding.

Schools are now required to systematically gather data documenting changes in the occurrence of violence on their campuses.

School psychologists are one of the few school personnel who receive specific training in research and program evaluation and therefore are uniquely positioned to assist schools in their efforts to meet these Title IV regulations. Al­though school psychologists report that they were not specifically trained to address school violence (Furlong, Babinski, Poland, Munoz, & Boles, 1996), they do have other expertise with which to assist schools in this area of concern. It is our view that one way school psychologists can playa critical role in violence prevention efforts is to help schools gather meaningful school violence needs assessment data. This information can be used to plan and implement strategies to create positive, youth-centered climates that are consis­tent with schools' broader educational mission. A first step in assuming this role is developing baseline information about the incidence of violence and other safety concerns on California's

About the Authors: Michael Furlong is an associate professor at UCSB and Richard Morrison is the Director of Student Services for the VUSD. Michael Bates and Annie Chung are school psychology doctoral students at UCSB. Correspondence can be sent to UCSB, Education, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; e-mail: mfur long@education.ucsb.edu.

72 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

school campuses: this is the objective of this paper.

School Violence Assessment Strategies Although media coverage devoted to

school violence has increased dramatically since 1992 (Furlong, Morrison, Chung, Bates, & Morrison, 1997), documentation of its true inci­dence has been limited (Furlong & Morrison, 1996). In addition to the many opinion surveys conducted in recent years (e.g., the annual Phi Delta Kappa-Gallop Poll has rated concern about school violence and school discipline as the public's #1 concern about public education; Elam & Rose, 1994, 1995), two major strategies have been used to gather school violence incidence information: (1) reports of crimes occurring on school campuses and (2) self-reports of violence perpetration and or violence victimization on school campuses. [For more detailed reviews of school violence studies the reader is referred to Furlong, Chung, Bates, and Morrison (1995), Furlong and G. M. Morrison (1994), Furlong, and R. Morrison (1994), Furlong et al. (1997), and Morrison, Furlong, and Morrison (1997).]

Reporting school crimes. The Federal Justice Department annually conducts a national household survey that asks individuals to de­scribe their crime victimization during the preced­ing six months, whether or not it is reported to the police (National Crime Victimization Survey, NCVS; U. S. Department of Justice, 1991). In 1988 this survey was modified to ask youths ages 12 to 19 about crime victimization that occurred "at or near school." This national survey is the source of the estimate that nearly 3 million "school crimes" occur nationally. This school crime supplement was readministered in 1995 but no updated findings have been released as of July, 1997.

California was one of the first states to systematically gather data about the incidence of crimes that occur on school campuses. During 1985-86 through 1989-90, schools were required to report to the California Department of Education the occurrence of crimes that fell into four broad categories: (1) drugs and alcohol offenses, (2) crimes against persons, (3) property crimes, and (4) other incidents (e.g., weapon possession). Annual school crime reports were produced with the last one released for the 1988-89 school year

(California Department of Education, 1990). Although these data have been cited to support an increase in the level of school violence in California's public school during the late 1980s (e.g., Goldstein & Co no ley, 1997), they were not without some interpretation complications. Schools were reluctant to report school crimes outside of traditional school disciplinary proce­dures and it appears that under reporting oc­curred during the initial baseline year. For these reasons, school crime reports collected during the 1980s were of unknown accuracy and were suspended in the 1990-91 school year. During the 1995-96 school year, mandatory school crime reporting was reinstated with the implementation of the California Safe Schools Assessment (CSSA; Hanson & Kleaver, 1995). Educators throughout California are again required to document the occurrence of each crime that occurs at school. The renewal of school crime reporting in Califor­nia was accompanied by careful inservice plan­ning in an attempt to increase the consistency of reporting across educational jurisdictions. Schools have also received assistance in dissemi­nating incidence information to the public in a manner that facilitates community action plan­ning and avoids the attribution of blame for "unsafe" school conditions. The first California Safe Schools Assessment Report (California Depart­ment of Education, 1997) was completed as a demonstration effort to ensure that the reporting system was standardized before final baseline data are collected. The results of this first edition of the CSSA found an overall school crime rate of 14.7 per 1000 students during the 1995-96 year. The single most frequent crime on California's school campuses was "Battery," which occurred at a rate of 3.3 per 1000 students. Possession of all types of weapons were reported at a rate of 1.2 per 1000 students. This means that a high school with 2000 pupils on average had 2 to 3 official weapons possessions during the school year-in most instances a knife or another sharp object. Students were the victims of nearly 9 out of 10 officially reported school crimes. Although the CSSA will provide important school violence information during the coming years, as with all official crime reports, it is likely to underestimate the occurrence of victimization of students on campus. For example, in a national study con-

School Violence Victim Patterns in California 73

ducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics (Nolin, Davies, & Chandler, 1995), 12% of secondary school students in 1993 said they had been the victim of bullying, physical assault, or robbery at school or on the way to school during the preceding school year. The rate found in this student school crime self-report was more than 10 times higher than the rate reported in the CSSA summary. One strategy that has been used to complement official school crime reports is to ask students directly if they have experienced specific types of victimization at schoo1.

School violence self-reports. On a national level, the largest study of school violence was Violent School, Safe Schools (National Institute of Education, 1978), which was commissioned by the U. S. Senate during the mid-70s. This now out­dated study gathered information about both school crimes and violence victimization.2 More recently, national-level information about school violence victimization has been gathered through the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBS) administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1997; Kann, Warren, Harris, Collins, Douglas, Collins, Williams, Ross, & Kolbe, 1995; also see CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, September 27, 1996 for the latest YRBS report). Conducted biannually since 1991, the YRBS is a general survey designed to address adolescent's involvement in various risk-related behaviors (e.g., drug use, sexual behavior, driving without seat belts, on so on). Given the number of items in the YRBS and the number of topics it covers, it was possible to include only five items relevant to school violence, as shown in Figure 1; student responses to these questions are fre­quently used by policy makers to evaluate the level of violence in schools. For example, the YRBS is the source of many references to the assertion that about 4% of youths stay home from school during a typical month because of safety concerns (e.g., Poland, 1997).

Not disputing these data, there is nonethe­less a need to carefully examine school violence information before it is accepted as proven fact. For example, for this paper we reexamined the "stay-away-from school" item from the 1995 YRBS report (Kann et al., 1995), and found that

across the states surveyed, the correlation be­tween the percentage of students saying that they stayed home from school because of safety con­cerns was low for level of weapon possession at their school (r = 0.37), being in a fight at school in the previous 30 days (r = 0.33), and having per­sonal property stolen at school (r = 0.24). This finding suggest that for most youth perceptions of danger on campus may differ from the actual incidence of violence on campus. The only strong relationship found for staying home from school was with having been threatened by someone using a weapon (r = 0.55), clearly an expected relationship.3

Although the depth of school safety content addressed by the YRBS is limited, it has the distinct advantage of having been adminis­tered several times during the 1990s .. As a result, these data provide information about school safety trends. For example, in this paper we reexamined the past 30-day weapon possession (e.g., gun, knife or club) rates from the 1993 and 1995 YRBS reports. As shown in Figure 2, both male and female high school students reported lower rates of weapons possession in the 1995 report, again emphasizing (a) the importance of regularly gathering school safety information in order to guide educational policy by fact, not solely by personal impression or concerns, and (b) that well-conducted student surveys can provide valuable information about the occurrence of school violence.

In reference to school violence in Califor­nia, the entire YRBS was administered to students in the San Diego Unified School District in both 1991 and 1993. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Kann et a1., 1995) pro­vided information across 15 urban areas, such as Seattle, Newark, Chicago, and others. Of these cities, San Diego ranked 3rd lowest on weapon possession, lowest on physical fights, but highest on theft. This limited information suggests that in comparison to other urban areas in America, San Diego generally rates favorably on the YRBS school safety indicators, a condition that may not be recognized by the general public. The YRBS data have some limitations but they do emphasize the need to document the range and scope of violence occurring on California's school cam­puses.

74 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

Figure 1. School Safety Items Centers for Disease Control and Prevention IS Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBS)

s I •• - ___

Note. Numbers correspond to the order in which these items appear in the YRBS.

14. During the past 30 days, on how many days did you carry a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club on school property? a. 0 days h. J day c. 2 or 3 days d. 4 or 5 days e. 6 or more days

15. During the past 30 days, how many days did you not go to school because you felt you would be unsafe at school or on your way to or from schoo1? a. 0 days h. J day c. 2 or 3 days d. 4 or 5 days e. 6 or more days

16. During the past 12 months, how many times has someone threatened or in injured you with a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club on school property? a. 0 times h. 1 time c. 2 or 3 times

f 8 or 9 times d. 4 or 5 times g. 10 or J J times

e. 6 or 7 times h. 12 or more times

17. During the/past 12 months, how many times has someone stolen or deliberately damaged your property such as your car, clothing, or books on school property? a. 0 times h. 1 time c. 2 or 3 times d. 4 or 5 times e. 6 or 7 times f 8 or 9 times g. 10 or J 1 times h. 12 or more times

20. During the past 12 months, how many times were you in a physical fight on school property? a. 0 times d. 4 or 5 times g. 10 or 11 times

h. 1 time e. 6 or 7 times h. 12 or more times

c. 2 or 3 times f 8 or 9 times

School Violence Victim Patterns in California 75

Furlong, 1996; Fur­

In School Out of School

-.- Male

~ Female

34.3

long et a1., 1997), which is based On the school safety planning framework originally described in the Safe Schools: A Planning Guide for Action (California Depart-

17.9

~3

.~1

ment of Education, 1989) and elaborated in other publications (Furlong, Morrison, & Clontz, 1996;

5.1 4.9

9.2 bs-- . 8.3

4. Morrison & Furlong, 1994; Morrison et a1., 1997). In addition,

11I""m~' .. ,_.-.~~~,~.-,~ developmental ver­

Figure 2. High school students (national sample) reporting past-month weapon (gun, kniJe, or club) possession at-school and out-oj-school during 1993 and 1995. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (Kann et al., 1995).

sions of the CSCSS have been used in previous school violence studies (Bates, Chung, & Chase, 1997; Furlong et aI., 1995; Furlong et a1., 1997; Morrison, Furlong, & Smith, 1994; Rosenblatt &

Purpose of Study California has been a national leader in

developing and implementing procedures to gather school crime data, but broader information about school violence victimization in California has been limited. As mentioned previously, YRBS responses have been collected only for students from San Diego (subsets of the YRBS have been collected in San Francisco USD and a small sample was collected in Los Angeles USD). The biannual California Drug Use Survey (Skager & Austin, 1996) recently included a few school violence-related items (see Furlong, Casas, Corral, Chung, & Bates, in press), but otherwise there are no statewide school violence victimization sur­veys that have been conducted and published in peer-reviewed outlets. To address this need, we created an assessment instrument named the California School Climate and Safety Survey (CSCSS;

Furlong, 1997). This study presents

school violence victimization incidence data for a large sample of students attending secondary schools in California. Its primary purpose is to examine how past-month violence victimization patterns vary across grade, gender, and racial­ethnic groups, characteristics that have been shown in previous studies to be associated with the incidence of violence (Cartledge & Talbert Johnson, 1997; Cornell & Loper, 1996; Furlong et a1., 1995, 1997; Soriano, 1995; Spunt, Goldstein, Bellucci, & Miller, 1990). It represents an initial examination about the types of violence victim­ization that California's public school students say that they experience in a typical month. A related purpose is to clarify information about the incidence of violence victimization in California's schools because preliminary information derived from prototype versions of the CSCSS have appeared in published literature. Goldstein and Conoley (1997), for example, cited the 1988-89

76 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

California School Crime Report (California Depart­ment of Education, 1990) as the source of a survey conducted in California that reported the past­month incidence of theft of personal property, being grabbed or shoved, being cursed by other students, and seeing a weapon on campus. All of these victimization items are included in the CSCSS. What is important to recognize is that in 1990, the CSCSS was in its preliminary stages of development. As may happen in the field of school violence, once information is attributed to an authoritative source, such as the California Department of Education, it is often cited in other sources without reference to the original research. With the publication of these data, reliable and valid self-report information about violence victimization in California's schools are made available for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.

METHOD

Participants The data used in this study were taken

from the responses of 7,534 students in grades 7 through 12 to the California School Climate and Safety Survey (CSCSS). Participating students included 1,593 seventh graders, 1,622 eighth graders, 1,225 ninth graders, 1,185 tenth graders, 979 eleventh graders, and 930 twelfth graders. There were 4207 females and 3327 males. The sample was ethnically and racially diverse: Latinos were the largest group represented (41.6%) followed by European Americans (39.3%), Asian Americans (9.6%), African Americans (6.5%), and Native Americans (2.9%). These students attended one of 18 junior or senior high schools located in urban, suburban, and semirural areas of central and southern California.

California School Climate and Safety Survey (CSCSSJ

The version of the CSCSS (Furlong, 1996) used in this study included 102 items asking students about general demographic information, perceptions of substance use, global safety, social support, and personal violence victimization occurrences at schooL the latter of which were used in this study. Victimization at school was assessed by asking the student to report if she or

he experienced any of 21 types of violence on her or his campus during the past month. The stem for these items was: "Have any of these things happened to you at school during the past month?" These situations were written in behav­ioral terms and sampled a continuum of harmful incidents ranging from less serious to more serious (e.g., "Someone made fun of you, put you down" and "You were cut with a knife or some­thing sharp by someone trying to hurt you"). Items also asked about personal exposure to potentially dangerous conditions (e.g., "You personally saw another students with a gun on campus"). As such, the CSCSS is based on a broad definition of school violence that draws upon risk and resiliency research principles and the concept of preventing harm in schools settings (see Morrison & Furlong, 1994 for a discussion of this issue). The total number of incidents re­ported to have occurred to each student was used in this analysis. The range of this victimization index was from 0 to 21, and it had a coefficient alpha of .85 for the sample of youths included in this study. To control for random or careless responding, a validity check item was embedded among the victimization items ("You took ten field trips"). Youths who responded "yes" to this item were excluded from the sample. The CSCSS was translated into Spanish and a small number of students in the sample used this version when responding. The listing of the 21 school violence victimization items is shown in Table 1.

Procedure Data for this study were gathered in 18

secondary schools that were involved in develop­ing school safety plans. They contacted the first author for assistance in administering the CSCSS to gather information to facilitate their planning process. In some instances, schools were prima­rily interested in general school improvement issues whereas others were responding to inci­dents such as cult-related homicides by youths in the local school community, and even to a stu­dent-to-student homicide on campus. These schools were located in a major urban center, in suburban communities considered to have low crimes rates, and in a semirural community (the number of students responding from each school ranged from a low of 237 to a high of 799). All

School Violence Victim Patterns in California

Table 1 School violence victimization questions from the California School Climate and Safety Survey

What Happens to Me at My School ~ ...... ,

- ..... .

.;.. This section asks about the things that have recently happened to you at school. Which of

these things happened to you at school in the PAST MONTH? (We mean things that have

actually happened to you, not things you have just heard about.)

Have any of these things happened to you AT SCHOOL during the past MONTH?

1. You were grabbed or shove9 by someone being mean .................. ... .............. NO YES

2. You were punched or kicked by someone trying to hurt you ....................... '" NO YES

3. You were cut with a knife or something sharp by someone trying to hurt you NO YES

4. You personally saw another student with a gun on campus .. .............. ..... ... .... NO YES

5. You were hit with a rock or another object by someone trying to hurt you .... NO YES

You took ten field trips (validity check) ........................................................... NO YES

6. You went to a doctor or nurse because you were hurt in an attack or a fight. NO YES

7. You had personal property smashed or damaged on purpose ................... ...... NO YES

8. You had personal property stolen .................................................................... NO YES

9. You personally saw another student on campus with a knife or razor ............ NO YES

10. Another student stole something from you using force... ........... ......... ...... ...... NO YES

11. Another student threatened to hurt you...... ...... .................... ................. .......... NO YES

12. Someone yelled bad words, cursed at you ................................... .................... NO YES

13. You were threatened by a student with a gun and you saw the gun ................ NO YES

14. Someone made fun of you, put you down ..... ............. ....... ............. ....... ..... ..... NO YES

15. Someone made unwanted physical sexual advances toward you .................... NO YES

16. Someone sexually harassed you (made unwanted sexual comments to you).. NO YES

17 . You were threatened by a student with a knife and you saw the knife ........... NO YES

18. You were bullied, threatened, or pushed around by gang members ................ NO YES

19. You were threatened going to school or on the way home after school.......... NO YES

20. You were involved in ethnic or racial conflict among students ................. ..... NO YES

21. Someone tried to scare you by the way they looked at you ....... ............ ......... NO YES

77

78 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

data were collected during the 1994-95 and 1995-96 school years. Negative consent was permis­sible at the time this study was conducted. The CSCSS was administered during one class period and an attempt was made to collect information from as many students as possible who were attending school on that particular day. The questionnaire was administered by classroom teachers. Students recorded their responses on a machine-readable response form. All response sheets were individually reviewed prior to data entry and excluded if they had more than five incomplete responses or had obvious response sets. For this study, students were included in the sample only if they had complete information for grade, gender, self-selected racial-ethnic prefer­ence, and did not endorse the validity check item embedded among the 21 violence victimization items.

RESULTS

Types of Violence Victimization Occurring on California's Campuses

The students in the sample reported experiencing an average of 3.96 of 21 types of violence on campus at least once during the month prior to the administration of the question­naire. The percentage of students indicating that they had personally experienced the school violence victimization incidents are shown in Table 2 (the 21 items are listed in the order that they appear in the CSCSS). Across this diverse sample of California students, the most frequent types of victimization involved verbal threats or hazing: cursed (56.4%) and made fun of (51.5%). Almost one third of the students reported being visuallly stared down (31.6%), having personal property stolen (34.3%), and seeing another student on campus with a knife (34.1 %). About one out of five students reported that they had been grabbed or shoved by someone being mean (23.3%), that someone threatened to hurt them (21.2%), and that they believed they were sexually harassed (18.7%).

In contrast to the relatively frequent occurrence of bullying and intimidation behaviors on school campuses, other types of violence occurred at lower rates. The least frequently reported events were being threatened on campus

by a student using a gun (3.6%) or a knife (3.8%). A similarly low proportion of students (3.8%) reported that they had been cut with a knife or sharp object by someone trying to hurt them. About one lout of 8 students (12.1 %) indicated that during the past month they had seen at least one other student on campus with a gun.

School Violence Victimization Interaction Patterns

To examine further the victimization patterns found among this sample of California's secondary students, a series of two-way ANOV As were conducted among the grade (grades 7 through 12), gender (male and female), and racial­ethnic group (European American, African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American) variables. The dependent variable was the total number of victim items endorsed by each student. Because multiple tests were conducted, the alpha level was partitioned to maintain an overall alpha of .05 (the alpha to reach signifi­cance for each test was .017). These analyses were conducted to examine the global relationship between victimization patterns and these key personal traits.5

The results of the two-way ANOV As were as follows: grade by gender, F (5, 7533) = 4.36, P = .001; grade by racial-ethnic group, F (15, 7533) =

1.56, P = .053; and gender by racial-ethnic group, F (4,7533) = 4.36, P = .002. An examination of the group means reveals that the significant grade by gender interaction (Figure 3) was attributable to lower victimization for females in grades 7 and 12 compared to males; the grade by racial-ethnic groups interaction was not significant; and the gender by racial-ethnic group interaction (Figure 4) was attributable to lower victimization scores by the Asian American females compared to Asian American males.

Grade, Gender, and Racial-Ethnic Group Univariate Patterns

The results of the two-way interactions suggest that the association among violence victimization at school is mildly related to the cross-classification of the grade and gender, and racial-ethnic group variables. These patterns are also strongly associated with the univariate patterns. To help the reader evaluate the school

TabLe 2. Percentage of students reporting that they personally experienced each type of victimization on their school campus in the past month-totaL sampLe, ranges across 18 schools, and grade Level patterns

~ Victim Items

Range Across Grade Level (%)

Schools ~%l (N=7534) Lowest Highest (n= 1593) (n=1622) (n= 1225) (n=1185) (n=979) (n=930) Total (%) School School 7 8 9 lO 12

Grabbed or shoved by someone being,mean 12.2 41.6 34.5 27.9 22.8 16.8 16.0 13.2

Punched or kicked 7.5 23.8 22.0 17.0 12.6 10.6 9.0 7.4

Cut with knife or something sharp 1.5 5.1 4.0 3.6 3.8 4.6 3.2 3.1 Cfl

Saw another student with a gun on campus 3.0 24.7 9.6 9.8 11.9 15.0 15.8 13.0 ()

::r 0

You were hit by a rock or another object 3.3 21.2 16.2 14.0 11.3 8.2 7.4 8.4 e.. <:::

Saw doctor-nurse because hurt in a fight 2.3 8.0 6.9 5.0 5.9 5.3 4.0 4.3 o· "- ro

Personal property smashed 6.5 24.1 22.7 19.3 17.8 12.1 14.0 13.4 ::l () ro

Personal property stolen 21.8 48.9 41.2 37.2 31.7 32.1 29.7 28.1 <::: n' no

Saw student with knife on campus 20.7 47.8 26.5 30.3 34.8 39.8 40.0 39.0 S· '"i:i

Something taken by force 2.6 12.4 11.5 8.5 7.4 5.0 4.4 4.5 ~ no no ro

Someone threatened to hurt you 13.3 34.0 26.3 14.4 17.3 17.8 17.1 14.8 3 C/J

Someone cursed you 46.2 68.8 62.8 64.4 53.2 52.9 48.6 48.1 S· n ~

Threatened by gun and saw it 1.5 5.4 3.3 3.8 4.1 4.1 3.8 2.4 ...... ..... ....,., 0

Someone made fun of you 39.6 65.6 58.5 58.3 49.8 48.1 45.1 ...,

41.1 a. OJ

Unwanted sexual advances 8.4 22.2 11.9 13.9 19.0 17.9 17.6 18.4

Sexually harassed 10.2 23.2 15.7 16.3 ill 20.2 21.1 20.0

Threatened by knife and saw it 2.2 5.4 3.7 3.9 4.8 4.1 3.7 2.7

Bullied by gang member 3.0 12.6 10.4 7.4 4.8 6.0 6.7 5.7

Threatened going to or from school 3.0 13.4 9.2 9.2 8.8 8.8 7.2 7.9

involved in racial-ethnic conflict 8.1 22.2 13.7 15.8 16.3 17.8 16.4 14.1

Someone to scare with looks 25.2 38.8 33.4 33.0 30.2 29.1 26.8

Mean Victim Score (maximum = 21) 3.00 4.69 4.41a 4.24a 3.93b 3.59bc 3.35c

Note. Mean Victim Score = Total number of violence incidents experienced at school in the past 30 days. Mean Victim Scores with different superscripts are 'I \0

significantly different using Tukey's post-hoc comparisons. Underlined-bold values show the highest incidence across grade levels.

80 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

~ <...--<>-_e __ :_e_:_1:_I_e ....

Gr. 7 Gr. 8 Gr. 9 Gr. 10 Gr. 11 Gr.12

Figure 3. Mean school violence victimization score for the grade by gender interaction (maximum = 2 J ).

e Male

--0--- Female

Figure 4. Mean school violence victimization score for the gender by racial-ethnic group interaction (maximum = 2 J).

violence victimiza­tion patterns dis­cussed in this study, a description of the univariate patterns are provided.

Grade patterns. As shown in Table 2, victim­ization reports decreased steadily from grade 7 (vic­timization total score = 4.41) to grade 12 (victimiza­tion total score =

3.35). Mean total victim scores across groups were signifi­cantly different, F (5, 7533) = 13.96, P < .0001, Tukey's post­hoc comparisons showed that the junior high students (seventh and eighth graders) had higher victim scores than all high school students and that the ninth graders had a higher victim score than their tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade high school counterparts. When the 21 victim items are examined, the junior high students tended to report the highest percentages for each item. The few exceptions included ninth graders reporting the high­est percentage of students saying that they had been sexually harassed or

Table 3. Percentage of students reporting that they personally experienced each type of victimization on their school campus in the past month-gender and racial-ethnic patterns

~ Victim It<ms

Grabbed or shoved by someone being mean

Punched or kicked

Cut with knife or something sharp

Saw another student with a gun on campus

You were hit by a rock or another object

Saw doctor-Rurse because hurt in a fight

Personal property smashed

Personal property stolen

Saw student with knife on campus

Something taken by force

Someone threatened to hurt you

Someone cursed you

Threatened by gun and saw it

Someone made fun of you

Unwanted sexual advances

Sexua\1y harassed

Threatened by knife and saw it

Bullied by gang member

Threatened going to or from school

Involved in racial-ethnic conf1ict

Someone try to scare with looks

Mean Victim Score (maximum = 21)

Gender (%) Racial-Ethnic Group (%)

(n=4207) (n=3327) (n=2963) (n=492) (n=3133) (n=219) Females Males Eur-Am Afr-Am Latino Nat-Am

16.9

7.1

1.6

8.9

7.4

3.3

13.4

31.S

28.2

4.4

16.3

SO.O

2.1

SO.3

18.3

22.8

1.9

3.S

5.9

12.1

30.9

3.36

31.S

22.9

6.5

16.1

16.9

8.0

22.1

37.7

41.4

11.1

27.5

64.4

5.5

53.1

13.0

13.5

M

11.7

12.0

20.1

32.4

4.71

26.9

15.4

2.7

6.9

9.7

3.7

17.9

32.0

33.3

7.4

26.0

61.8

2.3

60.1

26.4

20.1

3.0

8.0

8.2

11.3

31.2

4.03a

2S.2

16.9

9.0

23.9

18.0

11.2

22.0

44.3

41.6

9.1

25.1

67.2

8.2

50.8

27.0

28.0

5.7

7.3

12.7

29.0

36.4

5.16b

18.6

11.5

3.3

14.7

ILl

5.2

14.4

33.2

34.7

6.3

15.6

49.3

3.6

42.3

13.3

15.7

3.8

5.2

8.2

16.3

30.2

3.55C

32.9

20.2

9.1

18.3

18.3

13.3

26.9

39.0

39.0

14.6

~

59.2

10.6

55.8

25.7

28.8

.m.u 15.1

14.3

23.5

33.8

5.38b

(n=727) Asi-Am

25.2

16.0

4.8

11.8

14.7

6.7

20.5

39.9

27.8

8.5

19.6

56.4

3.7

55.5

14.0

16.2

4.4

9.2

7.9

18.9

35.0

4.15a

Note. Mean Victim Score = Total number of violence incidents experienced at school in the past 30 days. Mean Victim Scores with different superscripts are significantly different using Tukey's post-hoc comparisons. Underlined-bold values show the highest incidence across racial-ethnic groups.

'Jl g-o ...... -< [ rt>

-< ...... Q. S· 'I:J Pl -+ rt ~ Sf n ~ s: .., 8. Pl

00 ,.....

82 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

had unwanted sexual advances. In addition, seeing another student with a knife or a gun was higher among senior high than junior high pupils. In fact, high school students endorsed all items that mentioned exposure to a weapon on campus at higher rates than did the junior high students.

Gender patterns. The strongest victimiza­tion patterns are found when the responses of the males and females are compared, as shown in Table 3. The males reported an average of 4.71 types of victimization compared with 3.36 for the females, this difference being highly significant, F (1, 7533) = 249.95, P < .0001. More males than females reported having experienced 19 of the 21 violence types, the exceptions being the items asking about having unwanted sexual advances (females = 18.3% to males = 13.0%) and being sexually harassed (females = 22.8% to males =

13.5%). Males were 2 to 3 times more likely to report that in the past month they had seen another student on campus with a gun (males =

16.1% to females = 8.9%), had something taken from them by force (males = 11.1% to females =

4.4%), or being threatened by a student using a knife (males = 6.4% to females = 1.9%).

Racial-Ethnic group patterns. The total victim scores across racial-ethnic groups are shown in Table 3. Differences among the mean total victim scores were significant, F (4, 7533) =

30.78, P < .0001. It was found that the Native American and African American students had higher total victim scores, 5.38 and 5.16, respec­tively, than all of the other groups. The Latino students had the lowest total victim score (3.55), which was, significantly lower than all other groups when evaluated using Tukey's post-hoc tests. When the 21 violence items are examined, the highest percentages for each item were re­ported by either the Native American or African American students. The one exception was for the European American students who reported the highest rate of being teased or made fun of (60.1 %). Native American pupils reported the highest rates of being grabbed or shoved (32.9%), being punched or kicked (20.2%), having some­thing taken from them by force (14.6%), and being bullied by gang members (15.1 %). African Ameri­can students reported the highest rates of seeing another student on campus with a gun (23.9%) or a knife (41.6%) and being involved in racial-ethnic conflict (29.0%).

Victimization Patterns by School The availability of student responses

across 18 secondary schools provided the unique opportunity to examine possible school effects. As shown in Table 2, the students reported expe­riencing 3.00 types of violence at the lowest­incidence school compared with 4.69 types of violence at the highest-incidence school. The mean total violence score was significantly differ­ent across the 18 schools, F (17,7516) = 6.60, P < .0001. When the ranges of the percentages of students at each school endorsing the 21 victim­ization items were examined, wide differences were found. For example, at one school 41.6% of the students said that they had been grabbed or shoved by someone being mean to them-at another school, only 12.2% of the pupils had this same experience. Further demonstrating the range of experiences across schools, at one school only 3.0% of the pupils said that they had seen another student with a gun on campus, yet at another school 24.7% of the pupils reported seeing a gun. Although the ranges of reported victimization across the 18 schools were wide, this was apparently not due primarily to a strong school effect; that is, a few schools consistently having high rates across all victim types. Among the schools participating in this study, nine different schools had the highest percentage of victimization on one of the 21 specific victimiza­tion items and only two schools had the highest percentages of victimization on four or more of the 21 violence items.

DISCUSSION

Showing the difficulty of verifying infor­mation about the incidence of school violence, in Goldstein and Conoley's (1997) recent School Violence Handbook, the authors of three different chapters present the figure of "3,000,000 crimes" occurring annually on campuses across the United States. Of interest is the fact is that all three sets of authors gave different citations to support this information. The citations given are for 1987, 1990, and 1993-these data were original published in 1991 (u. S. Department of Justice, 1991). The objective of reducing violence on school campuses is obviously desirable, but this has been associated with less than precise docu-

School Violence Victim Patterns in California 83

mentation about what is actually known about school violence-we don't have to "prove" what is generally considered to be true: there is a school violence problem. This example demonstrates the need to gather high-quality information about local school safety needs and not to rely on fig­ures provided by others. We suggest that an important step in school violence prevention is to ask students at each school what is happening to them. This study specifically attempted to pro­vide California's educators with an in-depth view of what students have to say about their safety­related experiences on their campuses in a typical month, and thereby presents preliminary school violence normative data. What follows is a discussion of the most salient findings of this study.

School violence incidence studies con­ducted in other locales and with other instru­ments, have found that males are more likely than females to be victimized at school (Cornell & Loper, 1996; Kingery, Mirzaee, Pruitt, & Hurley, 1991; Kingery, Pruitt, & Hurley, 1992; Nolin et al., 1995). This has been the strongest finding in all school violence research, was replicated again in this study, and suggests that components of school violence prevention programs should specifically target the behavior and experiences of males. Males were more likely to endorse the victimization items with the exception of items relating to sexual behaviors and harassment. [See Stein (1995) for a discussion of issues related to sexual harassment in schools.] Although the items included in the CSCSS cover a wide range of victimization experiences and provide more depth than commonly-used school violence self­report questionnaires, additional research will be needed to learn if other items might better mea­sure the forms of violence females experience on campus. By weighting school violence question­naires to a ask about weapons and more serious physical violence, they may not provide the opportunity for females to fully represent their experiences on campus.

The second strongest finding of this study was that overall student victimization peaked at the seventh and eighth grades and decreased throughout the high school years. One presumes that this is due in part to the fact that (a) students learn to avoid dangerous campus location more

effectively as they get older, (b) juniors and seniors are less likely than freshman to be tar­geted for intimidation, and (c) students who are more likely to commit violent acts at school are also more likely to be subject to school discipline including expulsion and or placement in alterna­tive education programs (Furlong et al., 1997). An interesting qualification to this general decrease of victimization across the secondary school years is the finding that weapon-related incidents are reported to occur more frequently in high school than in junior high schools.

The sample used in this study was drawn from geographically and socioeconomically diverse communities, and there was representa­tion of youths from all racial-ethnic groups at all of the 18 participating schools. Although the strength of the relationship between racial-ethnic group and school violence victimization was mild to moderate, it was not anticipated that Latino students, particularly those in junior high school would report the lowest victimization rates. Information about school violence victimization among Latinos is scarce, but Soriano (1994) re­viewed general violence victimization among Latino youths. He found that violence victimiza­tion rates among younger Latinos adolescent (ages 12-15) was lower than among non-Latinos. This may provide an explanation for the generally low violence victimization among the Latino junior high students in this study. Additional research certainly needs to replicate this finding and explore why Latino students report lower level of violence victimization at schools.

In contrast to the finding involving the Latino youths, the finding that the highest rates of exposure to violence at school was for the African American and Native American students is consistent with findings from general youth violence studies. Hammond and Yung (1994) point out that African American youths are involved in extreme forms of physical violence, particularly adolescent males, at very high rates. In addition, in some communalities, African American youths are more likely to witness violent events. Although there is limited informa­tion about violence victimization among Native American youths, Blum, Harmon, Harris, Bergeisen, and Resnick (1992) conducted a na­tional survey involving 12,000 Native American

84 California School Psychologist, 1998, Volume No.3

youths using the Minnesota Adolescent Health Questionnaire. It was reported that about 20% of these youths indicated they have been knocked unconscious by someone else during the previous year. Kingery, Biafora, and Zimmerman (1996), Kinger, McCoy-Simandle, and Clayton (1997) and Furlong et al. (1997) presented evidence that school violence may be associated with multiple risk factors in a student's life. It is suggested that he school violence patterns for the Native Ameri­can and African American youths in this sample may be associated with high levels of personal risk factors in these students' lives. School vio­lence prevention programs should carefully consider the experiences of African American and Native American students to be sure to address their needs in a culturally competent manner that attends to any risk factors that may be affecting their lives.

Although there is legitimate concern about serious forms of school violence, including homi­cides (Kachur et al., 1996), the results of this study demonstrate that the most frequent forms of violence to occur on campus include verbal intimidation and low-level physical intimidation. This bullying type of behavior is apparently common on all school campuses in any given month, as suggested in previous research (Slee, 1995), and clearly most schools should have a bully prevention / intervention component in their school safety plan.

On the school level, some schools had somewhat higher levels of reported victimization than others. However, these patterns did not necessarily follow stereotypically expected pat­terns. For instance, one high school had the highest rate for 6 of the 21 victimization items. Interestingly, this school was located in a semirural, small town setting, a finding consistent with Kingery et al.'s (1991) research in rural Texas communities. Furthermore, results from the 1995-96 CSSA report shows that the five California counties reporting the highest crime rates were all in rural locations. This, of course, does not neces­sarily mean that rural schools are more dangerous than urban or suburban schools because their crime rates reflect the small student population on which their rates are calculated (a few crimes tend to produce high rates in small schools). Further­more, smaller schools provide the opportunity for

closer surveillance of student behavior with a resulting possible increase in crime detection when compared with larger urban schools. The patterns of victimization found in this study suggest that the incidence of school violence can be portrayed such that a few schools had high levels of overall victimization, but many other schools have high levels of specific types of violence occurring on their campuses. This outcome provides strong empirical support for schools to carefully conduct school violence needs assessments prior to selecting and implementing programs. Schools in California are required to develop such school safety plans and procedures to assist them in accomplishing this task, and a variety of resources are available to help with this task (California Department of Education, 1989; Miller, Brodine, & Miller, 1996; Morrison et al., 1997; Stephens, 1997). Additional research is needed to determine if subgroups of schools present with similar school safety issues and needs in order to facilitate efficient implementa­tion of violence prevention programs.

To not regularly gather school safety incidence information at schools is related to a broader process that denies or ignores the fact that students are being regularly victimized on school campuses and that this victimization is antithetical to the schooling mission. The results of this study show that schools may not differ as widely in school safety as is generally presumed. We did not find any school to be a "battIe ground," yet all of them had at least a few school violence issues that merited attention. An encour­aging outcome for all educators and the general public, is that the most pressing school safety issue facing California's schools relate to incidents involving how students relate to and respect one another: teasing, name calling, intimidation, and harassment, particularly at the junior high school level. All of these lower levels of violence can be reframed as developmental challenges for our youths and as part of the process of creating positive learning school climates (Furlong, Morrison, & Dear, 1994; Morrison & Furlong, 1994). This outcome suggests that schools making a concerted effort to improve their climate and to help all individuals on campus to better respect one another, for their similarities and differences, are at the same time engaging in school violence

School Violence Victim Patterns in California 85

prevention. Many types of violence occur on campuses

for a variety of reasons. One school may have high rates of bullying and teasing but relatively low levels of weapon possession. In contrast, another school may have many weapons on campus and frequent sexual harassment. School psychologists can support school safety efforts by helping schools to see the need for customized violence prevention and reduction programs. Safety programs designed for one school may not be as effective or efficient at another school; consequently, schools need to create safety plans that include multiple components designed to (a) encourage the majority of students who are generally nonviolent to continue to be nonviolent, (b) support students who have become victims of violence, and (c) intervene with the minority of students who have been aggressive and victimize others at school. When these strategies are en­hanced by using empirically supported preven­tion programs (e.g., Grossman et al., 1997; Olweus, 1991; Walker et al., 1997), then most schools should anticipate a reduction in school violence. School psychologists can support these school safety efforts by helping to plan and implement violence prevention programs and by helping schools to systematically gather data with which to evaluate how these programs reduce violence victimization, a requirement of the new Title IV regulations.

FOOTNOTES

IFor more information about national school violence prevention efforts see the following web site: http://www.ed.gov / offices / OESE / SDFS / . 2Recently, the Federal Department of Education has implemented a contract to conduct another national school violence study, which is being undertaken at this time. 3California school psychologists should be aware that some version of the YRBS will be used in a statewide, three-year pilot implementation of the California Healthy Kids Survey to be conducted under a contract with WestEd (formerly South­west Regional Labs). 4 Copies of the CSCSS are available from the authors. We have also created a Teleform·· scan­ner-readable response sheet to facilitate data

collection, scoring, and report generation for specific schools. 5 A three-way ANOV A was not computed because of the varying numbers of youths from different racial-ethnic groups. When the three-way cross­ing of the grade, gender, and racial-ethnic group was completed, even with this large sample size there were some cells with as few as 6 cases. For this reason, only the two-way analyses were completed.

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