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Description & Citation--Study No. 2587

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:2587
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02587
 
Title:Controlling Victimization in Schools: Effective Discipline and Control Strategies in a County in Ohio, 1994
 
Principal Investigator(s):Steven P. Lab, Bowling Green State University, Criminal Justice Program
 
  Richard D. Clark, John Carroll University, Department of Sociology
 
Funding Agency:United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice.
 
Grant Number:93-IJ-CX-0034
 
Bibliographic Citation:Lab, Steven P., and Richard D. Clark. CONTROLLING VICTIMIZATION IN SCHOOLS: EFFECTIVE DISCIPLINE AND CONTROL STRATEGIES IN A COUNTY IN OHIO, 1994 [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University [producer], 1997. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1998. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02587
 

Scope of Study

Summary:The purpose of this study was to gather evidence on the relationship between discipline and the control of victimization in schools and to investigate the effectiveness of humanistic versus coercive disciplinary measures. Survey data were obtained from students, teachers, and principals in each of the 44 junior and senior high schools in a county in Ohio that agreed to participate in the study. The data represent roughly a six-month time frame. Students in grades 7 through 12 were anonymously surveyed in February 1994. The Student Survey (Part 1) was randomly distributed to approximately half of the students in all classrooms in each school. The other half of the students received a different survey that focused on drug use among students (not available with this collection). The teacher (Part 2) and principal (Part 3) surveys were completed at the same time as the student survey. The principal survey included both closed-ended and open-ended questions, while all questions on the student and teacher surveys were closed-ended, with a finite set of answers from which to choose. The three questionnaires were designed to gather respondent demographics, perceptions about school discipline and control, information about weapons and gangs in the school, and perceptions about school crime, including personal victimization and responses to victimization. All three surveys asked whether the school had a student court and, if so, what sanctions could be imposed by the student court for various forms of student misconduct. The student survey and teacher surveys also asked about the availability at school of various controlled drugs. The student survey elicited information about the student's fear of crime in the school and on the way to and from school, avoidance behaviors, and possession of weapons for protection. Data were also obtained from the principals on each school's suspension/expulsion rate, the number and type of security guards and/or devices used within the school, and other school safety measures. In addition to the surveys, census data were acquired for a one-quarter-mile radius around each participating school's campus, providing population demographics, educational attainment, employment status, marital status, income levels, and area housing information. Also, arrest statistics for six separate crimes (personal crime, property crime, simple assault, disorderly conduct, drug/alcohol offenses, and weapons offenses) for the reporting district in which each school was located were obtained from local police departments. Finally, the quality of the immediate neighborhood was assessed by means of a "windshield" survey in which the researchers conducted a visual inventory of various neighborhood characteristics: type and quality of housing in the area, types of businesses, presence of graffiti and gang graffiti, number of abandoned cars, and the number and perceived age of pedestrians and people loitering in the area. These contextual data are also contained in Part 3.
 
Subject Term(s):control, crime in schools, discipline, drug use, fear of crime, gangs, high schools, neighborhood characteristics, personal security, principals, school security, student misconduct, students, teachers, victimization, weapons
 
Geographic Coverage:Ohio, United States
 
Time Period:1994
 
Date(s) of Collection:1994
 
Unit of Observation:Parts 1-2: Individuals, Part 3: Institutions
 
Universe:All public and private schools in a county in Ohio.
 
Data Type:survey data
 
Data Collection Notes:The user guide, codebooks, and data collection instruments are provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.
 

Methodology

Sample:Ten public school districts, a Catholic school system, and several, mostly small, private magnet schools were located in the county. Within the confines of the county, approximately 40,000 students were enrolled in grades 7 through 12. The researchers were able to obtain information from 44 different schools, including 31 public and 13 private schools. These 44 schools were comprised of 8 of the 10 public school districts, the Catholic school system, and the largest of the private schools. The school districts that participated represented approximately 85 percent of the youths in the county and were a representative cross-section of the county. The actual selection of the students for the survey was completely random and conducted by the schools. All teachers and principals in the participating schools were included in their respective surveys.
 
Data Source:(1) self-enumerated forms, (2) data from the Bureau of the Census, (3) statistics from local police departments, and (4) a "windshield survey"
 
Mode of Data Collection:School data were collected from students, teachers, and principals in 44 junior and senior high schools. Data on the immediate neighborhoods surrounding each school were obtained from the Bureau of the Census, from local police departments, and from a "windshield" survey by researchers.
 
Response Rates:In the public school systems, data were obtained from 88 percent of the public junior high schools (15 of 17) and senior high schools (16 of 18) in the county. In the Catholic school system, data were obtained from 67 percent of the high schools (4 of 6) and 24 percent of the schools containing grades 7 and 8 (8 of 33). The 44th school was a large private, nondenominational school. The initial count of 11,085 usable student questionnaires represented approximately 35 percent of the students in the participating schools. The initial count of 1,045 usable teacher surveys resulted in approximately a 40-percent response rate. Principal questionnaires were returned from 43 of the 44 participating schools, giving a response rate of 98 percent. One principal did not respond, so data were located from district files for that school. At the time the data files were constructed, some cases were eliminated from the student and teacher data due to uncertainty as to which schools the surveys referred to.
 
Presence of Common Scales:Several Likert-type scales were used.
 
Extent of Processing:Data and documentation were reformatted by ICPSR. ICPSR also performed checks for undocumented codes and generated SAS and SPSS data definition statements for this collection. Missing data codes were standardized by the data producer.
 

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:1998-12-10
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2006-03-30.
 
  2006-03-30 - File CB2587.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.
 
  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: Student Survey Data
  • DS2: Teacher Survey Data
  • DS3: Principal Survey Data and Neighborhood Data
 

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