Hate at school: victimization and disorder associated with school avoidance

Abstract

Previous research indicates that victimization at school and school disorder are associated with school avoidance. The appearance of hateful words and symbols at schools and verbal hateful attacks at schools are prompting additional concerns about students’ perceived safety. The current study provides evidence that observing and being victimized by hate at school are additional contributors to school avoidance that is enacted over concerns of being attacked at school. This includes avoidance of the school itself as well as specific places at the school such as the school entrance, school cafeteria, and parking lots. Data analyzed from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey provide this evidence. The findings point to recommendations for identifying and reducing hate in schools while maintaining efforts to reduce bullying and provide a positive school climate.

Notes

Notes

1 The most recent publicly available version of the SCS was released in 2015. However, the 2015 version involved an experiment randomly assigning respondents to two different versions of the questionnaire. The variation involved how bullying is defined in the questionnaire (Lessne and Cidade (2017). Thus, using the 2015 data would have introduced unnecessary complications when testing the impact of victimization on school avoidance.

2 The correlation between the measure of verbal hateful victimization and observed hate is relatively low (.2). Descriptive statistics further suggest that these two measures are separate constructs as reported observed hate is more common in the sample compared to verbal hateful victimization.

3 There is a high correlation (.41) between reported fear at school and avoidance of school due to perceived risk, the study’s dependent variable. This corroborates the notion that including fear at school would be redundant.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brett Lehman

Brett Lehman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Auburn University at Montgomery. He studies bullying victimization and hateful aggression in schools through quantitative methods. Previous courses taught include Statistics, Research Methods, Criminology, Sociology of Education, Social Stratification, Senior Seminar, and Introduction to Sociology. He graduated with a doctorate in Sociology from Louisiana State University in 2014, and then spent 2 years in a postdoctoral position at North Carolina State University before joining AUM. He is a member of the Mid-South Sociological Association, the Southern Sociological Society, and the American Sociological Association.