Student Attempts of Violence Following a School Threat Assessment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Behavioral threat assessment is a widely used violence prevention strategy in schools, but there is little research on how frequently a student attempts to carry out a threat of violence after a threat assessment and whether schools accurately recognize and classify these cases. This study investigated: 1) how often students attempted violence and 2) whether threats judged to be more serious were more likely to be attempted. As part of a statewide assessment, 21 Florida public school districts submitted deidentified records of 621 threat cases from the 2020–2021 academic year. Of these, 107 (17%) threats were attempted and 3 (0.5%) resulted in a serious injury. Threats classified by school teams as serious substantive (OR = 27) or very serious substantive (OR = 50) were significantly more likely to be attempted than non-threats. Overall, these findings support a strong association between threat classification and likelihood a threat is attempted.