Assessing the Impact of Individual, Institutional, and Community Factors on Student Misconduct: A Focus on Administrative Indicators

• In Event: Exploring the Relationship Between School Climate, Disorder, and Students' Behavior

Abstract

A growing body of research on student safety has focused on the intersection between school climate, school disorder, and surrounding neighborhood characteristics. Less research has specifically focused on school-level factors that puts youth at risk for various forms of student misconduct. This void in the literature is surprising given what is already known concerning the connection between school climate and school safety, but not necessarily how the impact of school-level administrative information contextualizes these relationships. The current study examines two forms of student misconduct by linking U.S. census data and school administrative data with survey responses from approximately 4,000 students in a Southern state. Individual (student-level), institutional (school-level), and community (zip code-level) indicators are used to investigate the relationship between perceptions of school climate, institutional infractions, and student misconduct (school-based victimizations and availability of illegal substances.) The results have important implications for understanding the multi-level nature of school disorder, especially concerning how resources should be distributed between the various type of agents (school and neighborhood) that impact students’ lives.

Author

• Jennifer H. Peck, University of Central Florida