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This study sought to advance understanding of how school climate is a critical factor in school safety and violence prevention. Middle school and high school students and staff were surveyed over the span of eight years from 2013-2020. Middle school students and staff were surveyed during odd years (4 waves of data collection), and high school students and staff were surveyed the other even years (again four years of data collection). All four years of data per group were combined into a single dataset. A final file was created pooling all eight years of data collection averaging student and staff responses by school.

Both the student and teacher/staff surveys covered two domains: school climate and safety conditions. The school climate domain included perceptions of the school's disciplinary practices, student support efforts, and degree of student engagement in school. The safety conditions domain covered reports of bullying, teasing, sexual harassment, and other forms of peer aggression, including threats of violence, physical assault, dating aggression, and gang activity.

Previous research conducted by the Principal Investigators showed that an authoritative school climate characterized by high structure (strict but fair discipline and high academic expectations) and high support (positive teacher-student relationships) is associated with many positive outcomes. Students who attend schools with an authoritative school climate demonstrated more engagement in school, have higher school attendance and academic achievement, and are more likely to graduate. Students who experience a structured and supportive school climate may be more willing to follow school rules, respond to their teachers, and treat one another in a respectful manner. This study continues that prior work.

Student threat assessment is intended to maintain school safety by resolving student conflicts or problems before they escalate into violence, with the secondary benefit of reducing reliance on safety practices that have deleterious consequences (e.g., zero-tolerance discipline). In 2013, Virginia legislation mandated the establishment of threat assessment teams in all K-12 public schools by July 1, 2014. The major goals of the project were to:

1. determine how student threat assessment is implemented in statewide practice in Virginia schools;
2. determine what student and school outcomes are associated with student threat assessment; and
3. determine whether training/technical assistance can improve student threat assessment.

To address Goal 1, the research team collected data across five years from the annual school safety audit survey that included information on how often threat assessments occur, characteristics of the threat cases, such as student demographics and how the threats were assessed, and the outcomes of the threat. The team also collected data on threat assessment training needs. To address Goal 2, the team correlated threat assessment data collected under Goal 1 with data on student and school outcomes obtained from the annual secondary school climate survey and statewide disciplinary records for school suspensions. To address Goal 3, the team developed, tested, and updated four separate online educational programs tailored to students, parents, staff, and threat assessment teams. These online programs have been implemented by schools in Virginia, 28 other states, and Canada.

This collection contains school safety audit data from 2013 to 2018 and all-time data for the online educational program assessments through 2019. Case-level data, high-risk case level data, and school climate data are available for limited years. Qualitative data on training needs will be made available in a future update.