Threat assessment has been widely endorsed as a school safety practice, but there is little research on its implementation. In 2013, Virginia became the first state to mandate student threat assessment in its public schools. The purpose of this study was to examine the statewide implementation of threat assessment and to identify how threat assessment teams distinguish serious from nonserious threats. The sample consisted of 1,865 threat assessment cases reported by 785 elementary, middle, and high schools. Students ranged from pre-K to Grade 12, including 74.4% male, 34.6% receiving special education services, 51.2% White, 30.2% Black, 6.8% Hispanic, and 2.7% Asian. Survey data were collected from school-based teams to measure student demographics, threat characteristics, and assessment results. Logistic regression indicated that threat assessment teams were more likely to identify a threat as serious if it was made by a student above the elementary grades (odds ratio 0.57; 95% lower and upper bound 0.42-0.78), a student receiving special education services (1.27; 1.00-1.60), involved battery (1.61; 1.20-2.15), homicide (1.40; 1.07-1.82), or weapon possession (4.41; 2.80-6.96), or targeted an administrator (3.55; 1.73-7.30). Student race and gender were not significantly associated with a serious threat determination. The odds ratio that a student would attempt to carry out a threat classified as serious was 12.48 (5.15-30.22). These results provide new information on the nature and prevalence of threats in schools using threat assessment that can guide further work to develop this emerging school safety practice. (PsycINFO Database Record
Many schools across North America have adopted student threat assessment as a violence prevention strategy. The Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines (VSTAG) is a threat assessment model that emphasizes distinguishing between substantive threats that are serious and transient threats that are not serious. This retrospective study investigated the interrater reliability and criterion-related validity of this distinction in a sample of 844 student threat cases from 339 Virginia public schools. To assess interreliability for the transient versus substantive distinction, research coders independently classified a subsample of 148 narratives, achieving classification agreement with schools of 70% (κ = .53). Logistic regression analyses examined transient and substantive threat differences in threat characteristics and outcomes. Threats were more likely to be classified as substantive when they included warning behaviors (e.g., history of violence, weapon use, leakage, etc.), were made by older students, mentioned the use of a bomb or a knife, and involved threats to harm self as well as others. Although only 2.5% of threats were attempted, substantive threats were 36 times more likely to be attempted than transient threats. Substantive threats were more likely to result in out-of-school suspension, change in school placement, and/or legal action. Overall, these findings supported the transient/substantive distinction, but indicated some training needs for school teams.
Threat assessment has become widely used in K-12 schools, but the process must be adapted to recognize developmental differences in student behavior, notably, their frequent use of verbal aggression. Mindful of their overarching mission to help all students be successful in school, educators can use threat assessment to avoid overreacting to youthful misbehavior that does not pose a serious threat of violence, while identifying a small group of students in need of support, counseling, and special education services. The U.S. National Threat Assessment Center identified eight key steps in establishing school-based threat assessment. Our group at the University of Virginia developed a formal threat assessment model that has been rigorously tested in controlled studies, demonstrating that school-based teams can safely resolve almost all student threats with relatively few cases requiring long-term suspension, expulsion, or law enforcement intervention. However, much more research is needed to establish the effectiveness of threat assessment and management strategies in general and to build standards of practice for training and implementation.
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