NCJ Number
144006
Date Published
1992
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study tests the hypothesis that school discipline/control is negatively related to the level of in- school victimization.
Abstract
This study uses secondary data taken from the School Crime Supplement (SCS), which was conducted from January to June of 1989. A total of 15,353 youths aged 12 to 19 were included in the survey, of which 10,343 were in either junior or senior high school for at least 1 of the prior 6 months. The SCS included questions on victimization, school discipline/control, school make-up, and students' responses to victimization. The primary independent variables related to school discipline and control, such as permission to leave the school grounds to eat lunch, the amount of the school day spent in the classroom, teachers and others monitoring the halls, visitors required to report to the office, and school attempts to limit the availability of alcohol and drugs at school. An examination of factors in in-school victimization used both Probit and Ordinary Least Squares regression techniques. The results indicate that schools which exert greater control over the student body and the school day and have harsher sanctions for misbehavior tend to have higher in-school victimization. Coupled with these contradictory influences on victimization is the fact that the independent variables in the victimization equation explain only a small portion of the variance. The researchers believe that the failure to find strong support for the hypothesized relationships is due primarily to limitations in the survey instrument. 2 tables and 8 references