Abstract
AbstractSchool shooting homicide events generate considerable attention. A substantial number of research reports have tried to explain the phenomenon. However, the outcome of these studies has produced a conflicting picture of the issue. Our systematic review explored the quality of research in publications on school shooters. Research quality was assessed concerning description of design, method and interpretation of results according to PRISMA and CRD criteria. We investigated evidence of the impact of psychological theories on how research was designed and interpreted. A total of 10 papers met the criteria for inclusion in the review. With a few exceptions, the research quality was low. Only three studies contained a separate methods section. Two out of ten studies reported from an interview with a school shooter. Secondary sources such as school, hospital and/or psychological evaluations were used in four studies, while the rest had only applied tertiary data sources. There was a void of psychologica...
Highlights
Tragic school massacres occur where a pupil or student has shot dead fellow students and teachers at a school, college or university
We found that the quality of the research concerning school shooters was not good enough to contribute to valid explanations to why such tragedies occur
A preliminary search of the literature on school shooters yielded no publications that applied psychological theories to understand the phenomenon. These findings lead us to do a systematic review of scientific research publications on school shootings with a main emphasis on research quality and the role of psychological theories and models. We addressed this by exploring the following research questions concerning school shooters: (1) What is the evidence-based knowledge of risk factors? (2) What quality constitutes the research that has generated the current understanding? (3) What impact has psychological theories had on informing the understanding and design of this research?
Summary
Tragic school massacres occur where a pupil or student has shot dead fellow students and teachers at a school, college or university. Like in any other school shooting, the motive and possible causes for the killing appeared not to be accessible This state of obscurity brings about speculative explanations from people in general and in the media. In our view, attempts made to find simple explanations based on personality traits, psychopathology or social context factors among school massacre, perpetrators seem to dominate several of the professional contributions in the field. The premise of these assumptions appears to be that school shootings have common causal dynamics because they share common behavioural and contextual topography
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