School Safety Strategies and Their Effects on the Occurrence of School-Based Violence in U.S. High Schools: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT

Recent incidents of school-based violence have resulted in the widespread implementation of school safety strategies across the United States. While research on these strategies has grown over the past decade, there is little understanding about their collective influence on indicators of school violence. Using data from the 2007–2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety, the present study explored responses of 936 school officials (N = 936) employed in high schools across the United States. Taking a confirmatory factor analytic approach, strategies were grouped into numerous factors based on their typology. Factor scores were then extracted and used as predictor variables in a negative binomial regression analysis to determine the extent to which types of safety strategies were associated with recorded incidents of school-based violence.

KEYWORDS:

• School safety
• school violence
• confirmatory factor analysis
• negative binomial regression

Notes

1. It is important to note that there is overlap among outcome variables investigated in this study. For example, the indicator “physical attacks or fights” is included in the summation of the severe violence and violence counts. See Ruddy et al. (2010) for additional information regarding counts of school violence in the SSOCS public use data file.