| Megan Kurlychek
Pennsylvania State University
The multilevel context of school crime: Assessing the relative contributions of student, school and community characteristics
FINAL REPORT:
This study provides one of the first comprehensive examinations of the singular and synergistic impacts of student characteristics, school context, and community setting on levels of student disorder and victimization in American Middle Schools. Using a nationally representative sample of 8th grade students from public middle schools, this study finds that individual risk factors of the students as well as the students' social bonds to the school are important predictors of disorder and victimization. While relatively little support is found for the role of school structure in explaining disorder and victimization, school climate, particularly poor disciplinary climate, is substantially and significantly associated with student disorder and victimization. Community-level characteristics such as residential mobility, poverty and racial/ethnic composition do not have significant direct effects on student disorder and victimization. Interestingly, the only community level variable significantly associated with school disorder and victimization was the urbanicity of the area with urban and suburban school districts reporting higher levels of disorder and victimization than rural districts. These findings have significant policy implications. First, they suggest that programs focused on identifying at-risk students should be continued as school disorder appears to be related to the same general risk factors as school failure and general problem behaviors. Second, these findings suggest that, at the contextual level, what matters most is not necessarily the structure of a school or the financial resources of the community it is set it, but more malleable concepts such as student-teacher relationships and fair and effective discipline practices.
Back to Funded Dissertation Grants Page |