State Anxiety Prior to and After Participating in Lockdown Drills Among Students in a Rural High School

Abstract

Widespread concern exists that participating in lockdown and active shooter drills, practices that although discussed synonymously are different, may be similarly traumatizing for students. This study examined state anxiety levels—anxiety-present (i.e., anxiety) and anxiety-absent (i.e., well-being)—among students in one rural high school, as reported on the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory short form one week prior to (N = 610) and immediately following participation in a lockdown drill (N = 736). Students reported low anxiety and moderate well-being at both time points. Independent samples t-tests results revealed that students postdrill reported significantly lower anxiety levels as compared to students’ predrill scores. Well-being, based on anxiety-absent reports, was significantly higher postdrill as compared to one week prior to the practice. The implications of these findings, including the need for policy to provide more explicit guidance about conducting drills in accordance with best practices, are discussed.

Keywords:

• lockdown drills
• anxiety
• school safety
• well-being
• student trauma

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Allyson Florczykowski, Abbie Finnerty, and Jacob Sheingold for their assistance on this project. They also thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback during the review process.

Notes

1 Importantly, students could not be opted out of the lockdown drill as these are mandated by the State of New York (see New York State Education Law, Title 1, Article 17 § 807; in addition to four mandated lockdown drills, schools also are required to conduct eight evacuation or fire drills each school year). Prior to the start of the project, each school within the district had completed two of their four state mandated lockdown drills during the fall 2019 term. No additional drills were conducted by the district after students returned from winter break (three weeks prior to the start of the project). Prior to the start of the project, teachers had received only minimal instructional guidance on how to respond to an active attacker in the school as part of professional development following the February 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, and students had not received any.

2 The drill was conducted during second period to allow for late arrivals to be able to participate.

3 Only one pairing—“I feel upset” and “I feel content”— had a correlation coefficient below .3 (r = −.28). All correlations were statistically significant at the .05 level.

4 In addition to lockdowns, schools also are required to have protocols in place for lockouts (used when danger is outside a building), evacuations (e.g., fire drills), shelter (used for weather-related emergencies), and hold (designed to keep hallways clear when dealing with a building-level emergency; see also Bakst, 2015).

5 Although tests of effect sizes for Cohen’s d, Hedge’s g, and Glass’s Δ returned nearly identical effect sizes, Hedges’ g is reported as it is best suited to account for differences in sample sizes and variance within the present tests (Hedges, 1982). According to Cohen (1988), effect sizes of .20 are interpreted as small, .50 are considered medium effects, and .80 correspond to large effects. These cutoffs also can be used to interpret Hedges’ g statistics (Brown & Fletcher, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda B. Nickerson

Amanda B. Nickerson is a Professor of School Psychology and Director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Her research focuses broadly on school safety, crisis prevention and intervention, and building social—emotional strengths of youth, with a particular emphasis on bullying and other forms of violence and victimization.

Jaclyn Schildkraut

Jaclyn Schildkraut is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego. Her research interests include mass/school shootings, homicide trends, mediatization effects, moral panics, and crime theories. She is the coauthor of Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities and Columbine, 20 Years Later and Beyond: Lessons from Tragedy, and has published in journals such as Journal of School Violence, Homicide Studies, American Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, Crime, Law and Social Change, and Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.