School Violence Victimization Among Secondary Students in California: Grade, Gender, and Racial-Ethnic Group Incidence Patterns

Abstract

During the past seven years, secondary schools in California have used the California School Climate and Safety Survey to evaluate violence victimization on their campuses and to help guide their school safety planning efforts. Sufficient information has now been gathered to provide educators with normative information about school violence victimization in California. This paper examines victimization patterns for a sample of 7,534 students in grades 7 to 12 attending 18 different junior or senior high schools in southern and central California. Past-month incidence for 21 violence types is provided. Results show that in a given month the typical student reported experiencing 3.96 types of victimization at school. The most predominate forms of victimization were verbal in nature: cursing and teasing, reported by more than one half of the students. About one third of students reported having personal property stolen, seeing a student with a knife on campus, or having someone try to intimate them by staring them down. Male, junior high, African American, and Native American students reported the highest rates of violence victimization.