Assessment of National and State Tip Line Technology as a Strategy for Identifying Threats to School Safety, [United States], 2018-2021 (ICPSR 38329)

Version Date: Jan 16, 2024

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Principal Investigator(s):
Michael Planty, RTI International; Duren Banks, RTI International

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38329.v1

Version V1

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Summary

The Assessment of National and State Tip Line Technology as a Strategy for Identifying Threats to School Safety was conducted by RTI International, in partnership with the Oregon State Police, from 2018 through 2021. The project was designed to describe the national prevalence and characteristics of school safety tip lines, and to develop lessons learned on successful implementation approaches by conducting a case study with the SafeOregon tip line. The three main goals of the project were to:

  1. Describe the prevalence and variability of tip line technology in public middle and high schools across the U.S. through a national survey of school administrators (Component 1).
  2. Evaluate the relationship between tip line technology implementation and school safety by augmenting the national survey data with publicly available data on student disciplinary and school safety outcomes from the Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) (Component 2).
  3. Assess the implementation experiences, outputs, and costs through an in-depth case study in the state of Oregon (Component 3).

For component 1, RTI conducted a national survey of public middle and high school administrators. For component 2, RTI conducted a national evaluation of school tip lines and measures of school safety, merging the national survey findings with eleven offense categories schools reported to the Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

For Component 3, the team set out to better understand how tip lines are implemented, the characteristics or features of these systems, challenges school administrators face during implementation and use, and perceived effectiveness. Using a mixed-methods design, researchers analyzed the efforts to implement and operate Oregon's SafeOregon statewide school tip line program and present data from the national survey for context. Case study objectives included identifying the (1) prevalence and school characteristics of tip line use; (2) basic operational characteristics of tip lines, including partnerships, staffing, tip submission and triage processes, and anonymity and confidentiality; (3) barriers and challenges involved in tip line implementation; and (4) perceived impact of tip lines. This qualitative assessment was informed by interviews with key stakeholders, school administrators and students. As part of the final component, RTI analyzed tip line data from the SafeOregon statewide tip line program (2018-2020).

Data and documentation from the qualitative interviews (student focus groups and school-level stakeholders) will be made available at a future date.

Citation

Planty, Michael, and Banks, Duren. Assessment of National and State Tip Line Technology as a Strategy for Identifying Threats to School Safety, [United States], 2018-2021. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-01-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38329.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (2017-CK-BX-0004)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

None

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2018 -- 2021

Date of Collection

2019-02 -- 2019-07 (National survey), 2017-02-01 -- 2020-08-29 (SafeOregon tip records)
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Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to assess the national prevalence and characteristics of United States school safety tip lines and, through a state-level case study, to develop lessons learned from successful implementation approaches.

Study Design

National survey. The national survey was fielded from February through July 2019, with extensive follow-up procedures undertaken by RTI (e.g., e-mail and telephone follow-up; a short, hard-copy version mailed to selected schools) to increase participation. School administrators at target sample schools received letters inviting them to participate in an online survey about tip lines. To analyze school safety outcomes, the research team also procured school-level violent offense data from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) for the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 school years.

Oregon case study. This mixed-methods case study collected multiple sources of quantitative and qualitative data in parallel.

All tips reported to the SafeOregon tip line between February 1, 2017 and August 29, 2020 were reviewed by qualitative analysts and transformed into a quantitative analytic dataset. 228 tips were identified as reporting one or more people for mass school violence leakage, or for direct/indirect communication of an intent or desire to kill multiple individuals at school. In addition, data from the national tip line survey were used to frame and contextualize the qualitative data.

13 state-level respondents identified as key stakeholders in the SafeOregon tip line (e.g., Oregon School Safety Task Force, Oregon State Police, tip line vendor and call center representatives) were interviewed regarding the line's development, implementation, marketing, dissemination, and sustainability. 11 schools agreed to participate in school-level stakeholder interviews, with 31 interviews conducted with individual adult stakeholders (e.g., principals, mental/behavioral health staff, school resource officers). Interviews with stakeholders were done in person or by phone, were audio recorded, and took about 1 hour to complete. An in-person student focus group was conducted at 10 of the 11 participating schools. Groups ranged in size from 4 to 9 students. Interviews were audio recorded and took about 1 hour to complete. All interviews were transcribed, then uploaded into NVivo for analysis.

Sample

National survey respondents were based on a random sample of 4,120 public middle and high schools that was stratified by school size, region, and urbanicity. The U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data (CCD) database was used as the sampling frame. Schools in Oregon were oversampled with certainty.

For the Oregon case study, state-level stakeholders were purposively selected for interviews based on their involvement in the development of SafeOregon. To identify school-level stakeholders for interviews, the research team selected a random, stratified sample of 20 middle and high schools from all Oregon schools that were enrolled in SafeOregon by November 30, 2018 (N=472). The selected sample was stratified by school size, urbanicity, and tip volume. At each participating school, individual adult participants were purposively selected based on their knowledge and/or involvement in administering SafeOregon or school safety. Students were selected for focus groups using stratified random sampling of student rosters across grade levels. An equal number of students was sampled from each grade level.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

  • Public middle and high schools in the United States.
  • Tips reported to the SafeOregon tip line.
  • School staff/administrators and students in schools enrolled in SafeOregon during the study timeframe, and state-level key stakeholders.

Unit(s) of Observation

Event/Process (Tips), Individual; Group, Organization (Schools)

Data Source

SafeOregon

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables

The national survey covered the following items:

  • Existence and basic tip line characteristics; if no tip line is in place, then reasons why
  • Roles and responsibilities for tip line functioning (tip line staff, agency, and partners responsible for administration; activities for raising awareness)
  • Tip line submission process
  • Storage of submissions
  • Disseminating information about tips received
  • Challenges to tip line operation
  • Other school safety practices

The following items were quantitatively coded for each tip report:

  • Date of leakage incident and tip report
  • Where leakage was observed
  • Role of reporter (e.g., family, parent)
  • Means of reporting
  • Type of threat reported
  • School response to the incident

School-level stakeholder interviews covered the following topics:

  • Roles and responsibilities of employment
  • Level of involvement in tip line adoption
  • Working with partners: collaboration, coordination, challenges, procedures after a tip is reported
  • Tip line marketing strategies, challenges, and suggestions
  • School safety measures

Student focus groups covered the following topics:

  • Knowledge of the tip line
  • Information shared about the tip line to students (if any)
  • How students would use the tip line, including trustworthiness, usefulness, and comfort using it
  • Perceptions of school safety and available school services

Response Rates

National surveys were completed by 1,226 schools, yielding a 30% response rate. 12 schools agreed to participate in the qualitative interview component of the Oregon case study, yielding a 60% response rate, with 11 ultimately participating.

Presence of Common Scales

None

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Original Release Date

2024-01-16

Version History

2024-01-16 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.

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Weight

Two weight variables have been included in the national survey data (DS1) that adjusts for sample design and non-response: NR_WEIGHT, a national weight that represents U.S. public middle and high schools, and NR_WEIGHT_OR, an Oregon weight that represents Oregon public middle and high schools. A nonresponse bias analysis was conducted using Common Core of Data (CCD) records to compare characteristics (e.g., size, region) of the 1,226 schools that completed the survey to those of the original sample of 4,120. Low bias was detected, and the survey data were weighted to adjust for the small amount of nonresponse bias that was found. This process was designed to ensure that all findings produced from the data were nationally representative.

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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.

  • ICPSR usually offers files in multiple formats for researchers to be able to access data and documentation in formats that work well within their needs. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR’s Accessibility Center.

NACJD logo

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.