Training School Resource Officers to Improve School Climate and Student Safety Outcomes, Arizona, 2015-2017 (ICPSR 37366)

Version Date: Mar 30, 2020

Cite this study |

Principal Investigator(s):
Jessica J. Summers, University of Arizona; Jenny L. Walker, Arizona. Department of Education

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37366.v1

Version V1

Slide tabs to view more

Summary

This study is an experimental investigation of the effectiveness of integrating School Resource Officers (SROs) into multi-disciplinary teams in reducing risk behaviors in students, specifically the average number of disciplinary incidents over the course of three years (2015-2017). The authors focus on the following research questions:

  1. Do schools with SROs demonstrate significantly greater declines in student disciplinary incidents than schools with no SROs?
  2. Do schools with SROs who receive the enhanced training (intervention) show greater declines in student disciplinary incidents than schools whose SROs receive only the standard training?
  3. Do the answers to questions 1-2 vary by sub-populations in the schools such as students from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, gender, and socioeconomic status?

Citation

Summers, Jessica J., and Walker, Jenny L. Training School Resource Officers to Improve School Climate and Student Safety Outcomes, Arizona, 2015-2017. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-03-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37366.v1

Export Citation:

  • RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
  • EndNote

Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (CSSI 2014-CK-BX-0016)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

None

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Hide

Time Period(s)

2015 -- 2017

Date of Collection

2015, 2018

Data Collection Notes

  1. Please note that the data in the present collection are limited to 2015 teacher survey data and administrative student-level data.

Hide

Study Purpose

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the effectiveness of SROs and SRO-related training in reducing student disciplinary incidents within Arizona secondary schools. Specifically, the authors compare total student incidents between 1) schools without SROs and schools with SROs with any training, and between 2) schools with standard-training SROs and schools with enhanced-training SROs.

Study Design

The study utilizes a longitudinal, experimental design. 45 secondary schools across Arizona were randomly selected and randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) have an SRO with standard training through the Arizona Department of Education, 2) have an SRO with standard and enhanced training (intervention), or 3) no SRO in the school (control). In the enhanced condition, SROs were integrated into multidisciplinary teams along with other school administration and mental health staff (e.g. counselors, social workers, psychologists) and received counseling skills training. Training took place in summer 2015. Data were collected on an annual basis between 2015 and 2019 in the following forms:

Survey data from students (2015 only).

Survey data from a sample of teachers from each participating school regarding perceptions of school climate (2015-2019).

Survey and interview data from mental health and administration personnel (2015-2017).

Interview and weekly log data from SROs (2015-2019).

Retroactive administrative student-level data from participating schools (2015-2017)

Sample

In the original experiment, 45 schools were randomly selected and assigned to one of the three conditions. In 2018, 30 schools agreed to give retroactive student administrative data; 10 schools responded with data for this collection.

Administrative school data includes all students enrolled at participating schools at each data collection time period (n = 29,198 students measured at three points in time for a total of 87,594 cases). Teacher survey data includes 20 teachers from each of the participating schools (n = 200).

Time Method

Time Series, Longitudinal: Trend / Repeated Cross-section

Universe

Students, teachers, SROs, and mental health staff (e.g. psychologists, social workers, counselors) at secondary schools in Arizona.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables

The Level 1 Time (Original) dataset consists of individual-level data with total disciplinary incidents. Variables include year of data collection, assigned condition, student gender, student race, student grade, whether students are free-reduced lunch, and total number of disciplinary incidents for that year. The 5 imputed datasets have the same variables as the original, but missing values for disciplinary incidents have been imputed.

The Level 2 Student dataset contains individual-level student data, including all variables in the previous datasets except for total incidents.

The Level 3 Teacher Survey dataset consists of aggregated means of teachers' responses for each school in 2015. Items represent subscales to gauge school climate, including student engagement, disciplinary fairness and justness, respect from students, students' willingness to seek help, and prevalence of bullying/teasing. With the exception of the prevalence of bullying/teasing scale, lower mean values indicate perceptions of harsher school climate. In the bullying/teasing scale, lower mean values indicate perceptions of reduced bullying.

A school code variable is present in all datasets.

Response Rates

Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales

Sub-scales from the Authoritative School Climate Survey

Hide

Original Release Date

2020-03-30

Version History

2020-03-30 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.
Hide

Weight

Not applicable.

Hide

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.