Investigating the Effectiveness of the School Security Climate on Student Connectedness and School Performance, New York City, New York, 2018-2021 (ICPSR 38254)

Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The goals of this sequential, longitudinal study were to: 1) Identify the most effective types of school security climates; and 2) Determine how the school security climate affects individual students. More importantly, the research team sought to collaborate with key personnel across the participating school district to help them make decisions about school safety and school climate that best suited their individual school.

Study Design View help for Study Design

A three phase, non-experimental design was used to meet the goals of this study. In the first phase, the research team worked with the school district to coordinate the collection of school-level data and established communication and infrastructure to recruit students in the following years. The goal of this phase was to identify which school security climates existed in the district, and what predictors accounted for significant variance in student engagement with school security and characteristics of their school climate.

In the second phase, the research team began surveying ninth grade students who were beginning their educational careers in their respective public high schools. While public magnet schools were included in the study, no charter or specialty schools participated. In this phase, the goal was to establish a baseline for student engagement with school security and attributes of the school climate, and to examine the extent to which school security influenced outcomes at the beginning of the year (cross-sectional analysis from Wave 1) and at the end of the school year (Wave 2). The research team also received the first wave of data from the Board of Education at the end of this year.

In the third phase of the study, the research team began looking at the data through a longitudinal framework. Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19 for the Wave 3 and Wave 4 data collection efforts, the research team continued to recruit parents and students to engage in the research. After COVID-19 hit, communication had to be reestablished with liaisons as many left the district or moved to other schools and/or changed formal positions. Research efforts continued, though several schools dropped out of the study. The research team worked with the Board of Education to secure secondary data for all four waves, though they were unable to retrieve Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) scores or any other educational standardized metric as the district did not collect this data as a result of COVID-19.

Both parents and students were required to opt-in to the research protocol. All ninth grade students were invited to participate in the research in the first year (2018-2019), and all enrolled students as well as current ninth and tenth graders were recruited in the second year (2020-2021). After parental consents were returned, the liaison contacted the researcher and the student surveys were scheduled. Students completed surveys in classrooms, cafeteria settings, libraries, and/or auditorium settings depending on the school's facilities, and the researchers were available throughout the surveys in the case of student questions regarding the survey content. No study incentives were provided for participants.

The survey examined students' engagement with school security, student perpetration of and victimization by school violence, and school culture and climate. Indicators of engagement with security and school violence were based on data collected in the School Survey on Crime and Safety. Indicators of school culture and climate were operationalized using the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools (MDS3) Survey (Bradshaw et al., 2014). Demographic characteristics were requested from participants. The final survey contained 119 items and took most students 20-30 minutes to complete. Surveys were completed across eight different schools throughout the participating district across four time points: once at the end of the Fall 2018, once at the end of the Spring 2019 term (May 2019), once at the end of Fall 2019 term (December/January 2020/2021), and one final time at the end of the 2021 school year (May/June 2021).

Sample View help for Sample

Non-probability sampling was utilized for this research. The goal of the study was to recruit as many students as possible from one large urban school district in the greater New York City area to complete the survey. Eight out of the 14 formal public high schools (not charter schools) within the school district opted-in to participate. Across the eight participating schools, the mean student enrollment was 983, with the median student enrollment being 614 students. There were 1,603 ninth graders eligible to participate in the study. Of these students, state-level statistics suggest 49.46 percent of students were female, 26.23 percent reported as Black, 57.68 percent reported as Hispanic, and 13.9 reported reported as White. Overall, there were 533 participants across the four time points.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

High school students across one school district in the greater New York City area between 2018-2021.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

Data Source View help for Data Source

Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection

Response Rates View help for Response Rates

The pilot sample consisted of ninth grade students (N = 359). State-level statistics indicate the sampling frame was represented by 2,413 students across all schools in the school district (14.8 percent response rate), and 1,603 students across schools that participated in the first and second waves (22.39 percent).

Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

The Maryland's Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative Survey (MDS3) is a 56-item measure assessing students' perceptions of their school's climate in three domains: safety, engagement, and environment. Throughout the survey, students are asked to rate their level of agreement with certain statements, report their perceptions of how much a given issue is a problem at their school, and answer various yes/no questions. This measure was developed by several researchers, including Dr. Catherine Bradshaw, at John Hopkins Center for Youth Violence Prevention, in conjunction with the Maryland Department of Education and the Sheppard Pratt Health System.

This project measured victimization, behavior problems, and interaction with security by adapting the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS). This survey was created by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics to measure the extent of school crimes across campuses. The items in this survey were adapted to assess student's perceptions, behaviors, and interactions for the purposes of this project. Three major domains were assessed in this questionnaire: school victimization (25 items), behavior problems (16 items), and interaction with security (22 items).

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2024-02-12

Version History View help for Version History

Weight View help for Weight

Not applicable.