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Description & Citation--Study No. 2580

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:2580
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02580
 
Title:National Survey of Weapon-Related Experiences, Behaviors, and Concerns of High School Youth in the United States, 1996
 
Principal Investigator(s):Joseph F. Sheley, Tulane University
 
  James D. Wright, Tulane University
 
Funding Agency:United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice.
 
Grant Number:94-IJ-CX-0033
 
Bibliographic Citation:Sheley, Joseph F., and James D. Wright. NATIONAL SURVEY OF WEAPON-RELATED EXPERIENCES, BEHAVIORS, AND CONCERNS OF HIGH SCHOOL YOUTH IN THE UNITED STATES, 1996 [Computer file]. ICPSR02580-v1. New Orleans, LA: Tulane University [producer], 1998. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2000. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02580
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This national-level survey of youth was undertaken to gather detailed behavioral and attitudinal data concerning weapons and violence. The research project sought to obtain information from a broad sample of high-school-aged youth to achieve diversity regarding history, cultural background, population size and density, urban and non-urban mix, economic situation, and class, race, and ethnic distributions. Data for the study were derived from two surveys conducted during the spring of 1996. The first survey was a lengthy questionnaire that focused on exposure to weapons (primarily firearms and knives) and violence, and was completed by 733 10th- and 11th-grade male students. Detail was gathered on all weapon-related incidents up to 12 months prior to the survey. The second survey, consisting of a questionnaire completed by 48 administrators of the 53 schools that the students attended, provided information regarding school characteristics, levels of weapon-related activity in the schools, and anti-violence strategies employed by the schools. The student survey covered demographic characteristics of the respondent, family living situations, educational situations and aspirations, drug, criminal, and gang activities, crime- and violence-related characteristics of family and friends, respondent's social and recreational activities, exposure to violence generally, personal victimization history, and possession of and activities relating to firearms and knives. Administrators were asked to provide basic demographic data about their schools and to rate the seriousness of violence, drugs, guns, and other weapons in their institutions. They were asked to provide weapon-related information about the average male junior in their schools as well as to estimate the number of incidents involving types of weapons on school grounds during the past three years. The administrators were also asked to identify, from an extensive list of violence reduction measures, those that were practiced at their schools. Variables are also provided about the type of school, grades taught, enrollment, and size of the community. In addition to the data collected directly from students and school administrators, Census information concerning the cities and towns in which the sampled schools were located was also obtained. Census data include size of the city or town, racial and ethnic population distributions, age, gender, and educational attainment distributions, median household and per capita income distributions, poverty rates, labor force and unemployment rates, and violent and property crime rates.
 
Subject Term(s):crime in schools, crime prevention, demographic characteristics, firearms, high school students, high schools, school violence, violence, weapons, weapons offenses, youths
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1996
 
Date(s) of Collection:1996
 
Unit of Observation:Individuals or schools and neighborhoods, depending on selection of cases.
 
Universe:Male high school students and high schools in the United States.
 
Data Type:survey data, census/enumeration data, and administrative records data
 
Data Collection Notes:The administrator responses, census data, and school data are attached to each student record in the data file. Information on how to select the first occurrence of these data for each school from repeated occurrences is provided in the codebook.
 

Methodology

Sample:A random sample of 132 high schools was drawn from PATTERSON'S AMERICAN EDUCATION, which contains a complete listing of every secondary school in the United States. Schools chosen were public, private, and parochial schools. Schools were drawn using sampling probabilities proportionate to the size of the 10th- and 11th-grade populations enrolled in a given school. Of the 132 schools chosen in the original sample, 53 (40 percent) consented to participate in the project. At both bivariate and multivariate levels, the participating schools were compared with nonparticipants across several variables pertaining to the schools themselves and to characteristics of the cities and towns in which they were located. In all instances save one, no significant differences were apparent between the two samples. The one exception proved unrelated to participation status. For a number of reasons, the student sample is not fully representative of American youth. First, all students selected for the study were male. The researchers chose male participants based on financial constraints and prior findings that males commit more weapon-related crimes than do females. Second, this investigation's focus was on high school students, and thus did not include youths who had dropped out of high school. Third, although the respondent list was generated through use of a 10-percent random sample of United States high schools, the participation level of students across schools was uneven, and thus there was a potential for self-selection bias toward youth who were more law-abiding. It was assumed that students less likely to engage in illegal activities would be more likely to agree to participate in the study than would youths more likely to engage in illegal activities. The researchers hoped that they would achieve greater participation among the students more at risk for illegal activity (including school dropouts whose names were listed before they withdrew from school) if they conducted repeated, direct appeals to the youths who failed to respond to the first survey mailing. The researchers' inability to choose their sample from student lists in the majority of schools and the average administrator's inability to facilitate personalized, repeated mailings of the survey to their pupils made this bias more likely.
 
Data Source:self-enumerated questionnaires, PATTERSON'S AMERICAN EDUCATION (Educational Directory Inc., 1994), and records from the United States Bureau of the Census
 
Mode of Data Collection:Data were collected through self-enumerated questionnaires mailed to students enrolled at the participating high schools. School administrators completed a separate survey. Some data on the characteristics of the school were obtained from PATTERSON'S AMERICAN EDUCATION (Educational Directory Inc., 1994). Data on cities and towns were obtained from the United States Bureau of the Census.
 
Response Rates:Student surveys distributed by researchers produced a response rate of 33 percent within a range of 27 to 50 percent (45 completed surveys). The school-distributed method produced an average response rate of 46 percent, within a range of 15 percent to 99 percent (689 completed surveys). Of the 53 administrators participating in the study, 90 percent (48 administrators) completed the survey.
 
Presence of Common Scales:Several Likert-type scales were used.
 
Extent of Processing:ICPSR created a variable, checked for undocumented codes, standardized missing data codes, and reformatted the data. Hardcopy documentation was scanned and converted into a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. ICPSR also produced SAS and SPSS setup files for this collection.
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:2000-02-01
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2005-11-04.
 
  2005-11-04 - On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: National Survey of Weapon-Related Experiences, Behaviors, and Concerns of High School Youth in the United States, 1996
 

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