A profile of rural Texas adolescents who carry handguns to school.: An article from: Journal of School Health

A profile of rural Texas adolescents who carry handguns to school.: An article from: Journal of School Health Review

This digital document is an article from Journal of School Health, published by American School Health Association on January 1, 1996. The length of the article is 3881 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Students in randomly selected eighth and 10th grade English classrooms (n = 1,072) in central Texas schools were surveyed in fall 1994 regarding carrying weapons to school and associated risk factors. Students who carried a hadgun to school one or more times during the preceding 12 months were compared to those who had not done so, using discriminant analysis and chisquare. Gun carrying at school increased 138% from seven years earlier in the same area using the same survey procedures. Most students reported they carried a gun out of fear or anger. Those who carried a gun at school had extremely elevated rates of repeated victimization of several types during the previous year: 589% higher for attack at school, 552% higher for attack outside school supervision, 576% higher for attempts to force sex at school, and 216% higher for rape. They also were more likely to enter dangerous situations repeatedly, were 17 times more likely to have used crack cocaine, had less instruction on preventing violence, less knowledge about means of avoiding fighting, and felt an obligation to fight under a wide variety of situations. Study variables accurately classified 78.4% of gun carriers as such. Researchers concluded that efforts at prevention of handgun violence in schools should include interventions to increase the safety of a select group of vulnerable students, while providing psychological counseling to assist them in overcoming emotional effects of victimization as part of larger violence prevention efforts. (J Sch Health. 1996;66(1):18-22)

Citation Details
Title: A profile of rural Texas adolescents who carry handguns to school.
Author: Paul M. Kingery
Publication:Journal of School Health (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1996
Publisher: American School Health Association
Volume: v66 Issue: n1 Page: p18(5)

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