The State of Nevada launched the "SafeVoice" anonymous tip line to prevent harmful events in schools and to promote student safety, health, and wellbeing. "SafeVoice" is a joint effort of the Nevada Department of Education and Nevada Department of Public Safety. Since its inception in 2017, more than 27,000 tips have been…

Mandatory reporting (MR) policies have been implemented at universities and colleges across the US. While described as a tool to combat campus sexual assault, there is great concern about MR policies which require responsible employees to report to a university official and its adverse effects on victim-survivors. Using a survey of the general…

While the philosophy of deterrence has long been rooted in the criminal justice system and has informed policy and programming, the results of such strategies have been mixed. A handful of research efforts have focused on the relationship between various deterrence perspectives and cyberbullying; however, few address this issue in a non-Western…

Calls to weaponize teachers with guns as a means of enhanced school safety and protection against a school shooting have intensified in recent years. Arguments for and against arming teachers are relatively well-established, but a paucity of scholarly research exists regarding its effectiveness and whether teachers generally support carrying guns…

Many post-secondary institutions have implemented mandatory reporting (MR) requiring employees to report knowledge of sexual misconduct. Understanding employee perceptions (e.g., benefits/drawbacks) and experiences (e.g., reporting disclosure) is important given this responsibility. Accordingly, this study analyzes responses from a recent survey…

This study examines the prevalence of bias-based bullying and the associations among bias-based bullying, negative effects, school avoidance, and supportive adults. Frequency analysis and moderated mediation analysis were conducted using a national sample of adolescents aged 12 to 18 in the U.S. from the 2015, 2017, and 2019 National Crime…

Two paradigms inform responses to active shooting situations: a traditional lockdown approach where individuals find cover in a classroom and lock the door, and a multi-option approach where individuals evacuate the area, create barricades, and, in last resort situations, actively resist the gunman. While a majority of schools conduct active…

This exploratory study used data collected from a representative sample of 522 Pennsylvania residents and 238 Pennsylvania college students to measure attitudes toward four different types of campus carry (CC) -- student, faculty, staff, and universal carry. Findings indicated that a slight majority of both samples believed that armed staff and…

Gun control is a highly debated and divisive social issue. In recent years, this issue has been thrust into the academic arena with the advent of campus carry legislation and policies. Researchers have taken up the task of attempting to better understand the attitudes of those most affected by campus carry legislation -- the campus community. The…

This study analyzed how the relationships of adolescent students with their peers, the educational community, and their families, as well as their attitudes to school violence, influences becoming a relational bullying victim, a bystander, or an aggressor in a sample of 4,273 Spanish high school students, using Structural Equation Modeling. We…

Despite recent attention to campus sexual assault (CSA), we know little about how institutions of higher education (IHE) have approached policy reform. Using anonymous web-based survey responses of 190 staff, faculty, and administrators from IHEs, we examined priorities that guided CSA policy implementation, as well as characteristics that explain…

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an…

Improving school climate remains a priority for improving academic achievement and social emotional learning, and for reducing violence and promoting safe schools. This study examined staff member experiences of school climate with the goal of identifying the quality of climate (negative or positive) that staff experience and how certain…

In Italy, numerous studies have been carried out regarding the phenomenon of bullying; however, studies on single incidences of sexual, physical, and psychological victimization at school remain scant. Therefore the aim of this study is to examine the phenomenon of scholastic violence with a broader perspective, as well as all the possible…

Research suggests that the safer students feel at school, the more likely they are to feel connected and able to focus on learning. Thus, measuring students' experiences with a school safety officer (SSO) is essential to understand the connection between officer engagement and students' safety. This study's purpose was to evaluate a SSO scale…