FREE ESSAY ON PREDICTING SCHOOL VIOLENCE

PREDICTING SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Are There Tests That Could Predict Violence in School Students?
This is an overview of the types of constructs which one might look at to determine if a
student is in a high risk category for acting out in a violent manner, and the types of
tests which would measure those constructs. We will look at some of these predictors, the
constructs they attempt to measure, and how this might aid in predicting future behavior.

There have been a lot of studies, interventions, programs, and models designed to reduce
or predict violence among our youth. The strongest predictor being past violent behavior.
Most of these studies have been linked to some type of deficiencies in the home
environment and school environment. The overwhelming question facing America now is - Why
would a student who has almost anything he desires, living in an upper middle class
neighborhood, bring a gun to school with the purpose of killing his classmates and
teachers? The question for researchers is - Can we predict which students are likely to
engage in this type of behavior? The resounding answer so far seems to be negative. There
is not any test, inventory, or self-report scale which can tell us which students will
act out in this manner. However, reviewing the literature there appears to be different
types of measurement when looked at aggregately, might identify those students who would
be at higher risk although they do not show a past history of violence and therefore fall
outside of the previously researched areas.
Some of the things we would hope to assess in identifying violence-related attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors among youths would be broken into three categories: 
1. Attitude and Belief Assessments
- aggression, couple violence, education and school, employment, gangs, gender roles,
television, handguns
2. Psychological and Cognitive Assessments
- aggressive fantasies, role models, attributional bias, depression, psychological
distress, fatalism, future aspirations, hopelessness, hostility, moral reasoning,
perceptions of self, responsibility, self-efficacy, impulse control, self-esteem,
empathy, and social consciousness
3. Behavior Assessments
- concentration, aggressive behavior, conflict resolution skills, drug and alcohol use,
handgun access, leisure activity, parental control, social competence, social problem
solving skills, victimization, disciplinary and delinquent behavior.
4. Environmental Assessments
- exposure to violence, family environment (adaptability, bonding, cohesion,
relationships), quality of life, quality of neighborhood
Assessment of Self-Esteem
One of the psychological and cognitive assessments we choose to look at is self esteem.
Self-esteem has been viewed in different ways. Block and Robins (1993) have viewed it as
a global entity: we view self-esteem as the extent to which one perceives oneself as
relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from
being the kind of person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one
positively and negatively values. Self concept theory has stressed that self-esteem is an
attitude about oneself as a whole (global self-esteem) as well as one's functioning in
specific areas of concern to oneself (specific self-esteem).
Relatively little is know concerning relationships between a child's self-esteem and
observations of the child's behavior. Most have come to a clinical assumption that
children with externalizing behavior suffer from poor self-esteem.
The other issue about self-esteem revolves around whether or not it is a stable trait or
a fluctuating state. Heatherton and Polivy (1991) referred to the short-lived changes in
an individual's self-esteen as state self-esteem and developed a scale to measure it
called the State Self-Esteem Scale (SSES) which is a 20-item Likert-type scale designed
for measuring temporary changes in individual self-esteem. There are three self-esteem
factors in the scale: Academic Performance, Social Evaluation, and Appearance.
Coefficient Alpha for the scale equals 0.92. 
Linton (1996) conducted a study to test its validity by comparing it with the Rosenberg
Self-Esteem Scale. It consists of ten items answered on a four point scale from strongly
agree to strongly disagree. The scale has a Guttman scale reproducibility coefficient of
0.92 and a test-retest correlation of 0.85. Her results showed a significant correlation
between self-esteem measures on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and four components on
the SSES. She demonstrated that SSES measures four distinct components within the state
self-esteem construct and provides evidence that there is a fluctuating nature of
self-esteem. It also supports the use of the SSES for study within the adolescent
populations.
Another study by Frankel (1996) compared Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale(PHS) and the
Child Behavior Checklist Inventory (CBCL) with the Pupil Evaluation Inventory (PEI) to
get a better understanding of why children with internalizing problems (withdrawal,
somatic complaints and sadness) consistently demonstrate low self-esteem, while results
of children with externalizing behaviors (aggression, poor impulse control, and
non-compliance) have been inconsistent. Externalizing behaviors have been demonstrated to
be stable over time, in the absence of treatment (McMahon, 1994). Schneider and
Leitenberg (1989) found that externalizers reported higher self-esteem than internalizers
which seems to be inconsistent with Olweus (1978) findings that children who bully others
have lower self-esteem than well adjusted children.
The PHS is an 80-item yes-no self report measure which takes about 20 minutes to
complete. The PHS manual provides factor scores on six scales measuring specific
self-esteem and a global score which is a weighted composite of items from the specific
self-esteem factors (composite scale). It also contains a behavior scale, an intellect
scale, a physical appearance scale, a popularity scale, and an anxiety scale. The manual
states an internal consistency of the scales ranging from 0.88 to 0.93 and test-retest
correlations were 0.81 across a 5-month interval.
The CBCL consists of 118 behavioral items. Frankel's study (1996) used the revised
Externalizing broad-band scale and the two narrow-band scales (Social Problems and Social
Competence--Social) found to tap social competence. Frankel found that the mean Social
Problems scale score was above the cutoff ofr clinical significance (98 percentile) while
mean Externalizing and Social Competence--Social scale scores were in the problematic
direction but within normal limits.
The PEI consists of 35 items, each rated as describes child or does not describe child.
Development of withdrawal, likability, and aggression scales were based on peer ratings.
Correlations between peer and teacher ratings have exceeded 0.54.
The results from Frankel's study (1996) demonstrated that self-esteem in boys with peer
problems was associated with a combination of social competence and externalizing
problems. They showed that all the PHS scales except popularity and appearance were
related to social competence. Both scales were related to externalizing problems.
Therefore the boy without friends who is perceived as aggressive by his mother tends to
report higher self-esteem in relation to peer acceptance that the non-aggressive boy
without friends.
Assessment of Depression
One of the most common and widely used assessments for depression is the Beck Depression
Inventory (BDI). The BDI consists of 21 items which cover a range of affective,
behavioral, cognitive, and somatic symptoms that are thought to be indicative of unipolar
depression. The subject can select from among four alternative responses for each item to
reflect increasing levels of severity of depressive symptomatology. Scores can range from
0 to 63. The higher the score the more reported depression.
Carter (1996) conducted research on hospitalized adolescents, to compare the validity of
the BDI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), and the Rorschach in
assessing adolescent depression. Although these assessment scales have been researched
throughly over the years with adults, the validity of these scales with adolescents has
been conflicting.
The primary means of assessing depressive symptomatology on the MMPI is the depression
(D) scale. It consists of 60 items with the subject either agrees or disagrees, allowing
for a range of scores from 0 to 60. The items are associated with clinical symptoms that
characterize feelings of hopelessness, despair, discouragement, and basic personality
features like high personal standards and intrapunitiveness. MMPI-D was able to correctly
identify 69% of a sample of depressed individuals using a T-score of 70 or above for its
criterion.
The Rorschach Depression Index (DEPI), is comprised of five variables (vista responses,
color-shading blends, egocentricity index, achromatic color responses, and morbid
responses) and the subject can receive scores ranging from 0 to 5.
The results of Carter's research (1996) showed a statistically significant relationship
between the BDI and the MMPI-D scale. However, there was not a significant correlation
between the DEPI with the BDI or the MMPID. This concurrent validity was assessed by
computing Pearson correlation coefficients for the depressed and non-depressed groups.
Both the BDI and the MMPI-D were statistically significant in discriminating depressed
and non-depressed samples. The DEPI as a sole predictor variable did not yield a
significant discriminant function.
When looking at the three assessments scales as predictor variables in varying
combinations, no combination increased the classification accuracy rates produced by the
MMPI-D scale alone.
REFERENCES
Carter, C.L. (1996). Validity of the Beck Depression Inventory, MMPI, and Rorschach in
assessing adolescent depression. Journal of Adolescence, 19, 223-231.
Frankel, F., Myatt, R. (1996). Self-esteem, social competence and psychopathology in boys
without friends. Personality and Individual Differences, (20) 3, 401-407.
Heatherton, T.F. & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and validity of a scale for measuring
state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.
Linton, K.E., Marriott, R. G. (1996). Self-esteem in adolescents: Validation of the State
Self-Esteem Scale. Personality and Indvidual Differences, (21) 1, 85-90.
McMahon, R.J. (1994). Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of externalizing problems in
children: The role of longitudinal data. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
62, 901-917.
Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools. New York: Wiley.
Schneider, M.J. & Leitenberg. H. (1989). A Comparison of aggressive and withdrawn
children's self-esteem, optimism and pessimism, and causal attributions for success and
failure. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 17, 133-144.