Effectiveness of School-Based Violence Prevention Programs for Reducing Disruptive and Aggressive Behavior

摘要

Extremely violent events in schools draw our attention to programs designed to prevent and reduce school violence. Highly publicized school shootings, though tragic, are thankfully rare. In fact, less than 1% of the over 2,000 homicides of school-aged children in the 1999-2000 school year happened at school (DeVoe, et al., 2004). Further, over the past 10 years, victimization of school-aged children has declined both at and away from school. Nevertheless, some forms of antisocial behavior are common in schools. For example, according to principal reports from the 1999-2000 school year, 71% of public schools experienced a violent crime and over half took serious disciplinary action for some children (NCES, 2004). Teachers and students also report negative behaviors in schools. According to Gottfredson, et al. (2000) teachers report that student misconduct is common and interferes with their efforts to teach. Among middle school students surveyed, 22% reported being threatened and 41% reported hitting or threatening to hit other students. Fewer high school students report such incidents (16% report being threatened and 32% report hitting or threatening to hit other students), but the numbers are not trivial. Minor behavior problems appear to be relatively common in schools. In addition, though serious violence is rare, some schools can be dangerous places for children. There are a variety of approaches to school violence prevention and maintaining safe schools, including surveillance (e.g., metal detectors, security guards, etc.), deterrence (e.g., rules, regulations, zero tolerance policies), and psychosocial intervention. This report focuses on summarizing the effectiveness of programs of the latter sort. This paper presents an update of the meta-analysis reported in Wilson, Lipsey, and Derzon (2003). That article included research reported up to early 2000. This report includes research through 2004.