Students are less likely to feel safe at their schools, compared to staff and parents

 School shooting incidents have doubled in the last three years, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, which tracks each time a firearm is discharged on school property. Many schools have taken measures to improve safety, including metal detectors, interior door locks, emergency drills, and undercover security. But do students and staff feel any safer? 

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a nationwide study of K-12 parents, K-12 teachers, and recently graduated high school students to test their responses to three hypothetical “threat scenarios.” The goal was to measure their perception of school safety as well as their likelihood to report a threat at school. Kevin Kapadia, PhD will present the team’s findings in early December at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis in Austin, Texas. 

Results of the survey showed that students were significantly less likely to feel safe at school compared to staff and parents. They were also the most likely to believe an attack would occur in each threat scenario. Staff were the most likely to indicate they would report the threat to a member of the law enforcement, while students were the least likely.   

Participants in the online study were given three threat scenarios that were based on hundreds of real police reports included in the Averted School Violence database. The scenarios represented: a targeted attack with planning, an ideologically motivated attack, and a targeted threat against an individual or individuals with no planning. 

Participants were asked how concerning they found the behavior to be, whether they thought others were likely to report the threat, and how likely they thought it was that each threat could turn into an attack. They were also asked what security countermeasures are present at their school (from a list of 14 possibilities), and which ones they would want added or improved upon. In general, the results indicated that students and staff do not like countermeasures that are inconvenient or intrusive, such as metal detectors and clear bag policies. Parents, on the other hand, are supportive of these measures.  

“Students indicated that each threat had the highest likelihood of materializing into an attack, yet they were the least likely to report a threat,” says Kapadia. “This suggests there are some barriers for them in terms of reporting. Whether this is because of social pressures, potential consequences for a false report, lack of trust in the administration, or something else is a topic that should be further explored.”