Space-time Study of Youth and School Violence - STARS for Schools, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2018-2020 (ICPSR 38014)
Version Date: Aug 14, 2025 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Douglas J. Wiebe, University of Pennsylvania
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38014.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
School violence, including violence en route to and from school, can make students afraid to go to school and frequently results in serious injury. These assaults occur in a context where the landscape that students navigate each day often includes bullying, substance use, and weapon carrying. Understanding the locations and times when students are vulnerable to assault as they proceed through their school-day routine could identify opportunities for more targeted, evidence-based prevention strategies.
The research team employed a mixed-methods, case-time-control design with GIS-assisted activity path mapping to understand risk factors and protective factors for school assault in the United States. Children aged 12-18 years requiring treatment at the emergency department of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) for an assault-related injury, or who attended Philadelphia schools serving as recruitment sites during the study period, were recruited for the study (n=63). Participants were interviewed using a survey questionnaire and GIS technology to recreate details of the path of their activities, indoors during school and outdoors before and after, from the time they awoke in the morning up until the time they were assaulted. In addition, participants were asked to describe their activities sequentially during that period, including companions and weapon carrying, and site-line features of each location (prospect, refuge, and escape). To include individual- and environmental-level context, participants' paths were appended with data characterizing streets, buildings, neighborhood populations, and the weather that day.
This collection contains data from the quantitative survey measures (DS1) and qualitative interview transcripts (DS2) from the path mapping section of the interview. While GIS data were collected, they were not deposited to ICPSR. Qualitative data will be released at a future date.
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Restrictions View help for Restrictions
Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this study was to use space-time windows of assault risk to understand how students' surroundings and experiences over the school day relate to the likelihood of being assaulted. The research team investigated the following questions:
- Do individual and environmental contextual factors of adolescents' activities on their way to school, during school, and after school relate to the risk of assault?
- What features of the contextual factors would enable the greatest reduction in school assault among adolescents?
- How do characteristics of what students do, the people they are with, and the places they go protect them from violence, or increase the risk of violence?
Study Design View help for Study Design
This mixed-methods study consisted of concurrent quantitative and qualitative phases. The quantitative component used a case-time-control design to analyze detailed point paths of each student's daily activities leading up to the time of the assault. The qualitative component was intended to supplement understanding of the quantitative survey.
Initial recruitment and enrollment occurred between February and November 2018 at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) emergency department and CHOP satellite primary care clinics. Patients who presented to the CHOP emergency department for injuries based on assault were approached by study staff for screening and potential enrollment based on interest. Flyers and clinician referrals were used to recruit patients at CHOP satellite clinics. Due to slow recruitment (n=23), the study team added community recruitment via two Philadelphia educational institutions in June 2019. At each school site, a community champion helped study staff identify students who would be a good fit for the study and reached out to them to gauge their interest (n=37). An additional 4 participants were recruited via siblings who were already enrolled. For minors, child assent and parental verbal consent were obtained prior to participation. Participants aged 18 years old signed their own consent form.
Participants completed a single in-person interview either in university/CHOP office space or at their respective school. Study staff first verbally administered a survey questionnaire and logged responses in RedCAP, then asked participants to provide a geospatial activity narrative of the day they were assaulted. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Following study completion, participants received gift cards, and parents of minors also received compensation if they accompanied their child to the interview. Staff used ArcGIS to collect spatial path data and NVivo to code interview transcripts.
Sample View help for Sample
Adolescents aged 12 to 18 years old who lived in and attended school in Philadelphia, and who had been involved in a violent school-related assault, altercation, or fight six months prior to the interview date, were recruited for this study. Students were excluded if their injuries were sustained as a result of self-harm or domestic abuse, they exhibited extreme illness or impaired cognitive ability unrelated to their assault, their parents were unable to provide consent, they were incarcerated, or they were located outside of Philadelphia for all or part of the period used to report their daily activities. Students with mental or physical disabilities were deliberately not excluded.
The research team contacted 174 potential eligible students. Of that, 74 were scheduled for an interview, and 64 completed interviews. One student was dropped due to technical malfunctions while completing the mapping portion of the interview, resulting in a final sample of 63.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Children aged 12-18 living in and attending school in Philadelphia.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
The research team administered multiple survey instruments that have been used widely in past research on youth violence and school safety, both at and outside of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Five larger, previously validated scales were adapted to create the quantitative baseline survey. See the Scales field for the measures used.
Demographic items include sex, age, race, and Hispanic ethnicity. Categorical items about the assault (location, cause, type of injury) are also present.
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
- Maryland's Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative (MDS3) School Climate Survey (Bradshaw et al., 2014)
- Neighborhood disadvantage scale - original version by Elliott et al. 1989, modified and adapted version by Crum et al., 1996
- Things I Have Seen and Heard (Richters and Martinez, 1990)
- Measures from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Violence Intervention Program (VIP) intake survey
- Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer and Jerusalem, 1995)
Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2025-08-14
Version History View help for Version History
2025-08-14 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.