Violence

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education - in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health - conducts the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) in randomly selected public high schools in every odd-numbered year. The YRBS focuses on the major risk behaviors that threaten the health and safety of young people.Read more

This article by Sarah McMahon defines bystander intervention as a promising approach for at-risk youth in regards to sexual violence. The study was conducted specifically with student-athletes to determine their willingness to intervene as bystanders in situations involving sexual violence. The researchers found that the most significant factor in their willingness to intervene was the closeness of the team bond. These results suggest that many student-athletes are willing to serve as active bystanders and provide positive intentions to intervene in sexual violence.

The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) monitors priority health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. The national YRBS is conducted every two years during the spring semester and provides data representative of 9th through 12th grade students in public and private schools throughout the United States.Read more

The Survey of School-Based Gang Prevention and Intervention Programs is a study of approaches used by schools to prevent or reduce gang involvement among schools. The study of gang prevention and intervention builds on a large-scale National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools, making use of a national sample of schools and the activities they are undertaking to prevent problem behavior and promote safe and orderly school environments.Read more

This research examines issues of adolescent offenses and how they differ for girls and boys; risk and protective factors associated with delinquency, including gender differences; and the causes and correlates of girls’ delinquency. Using official arrest data, self-report data, and victimization data from 1980-2005, this report examines trends in girls’ violence by measuring the involvement of girls in violent activity (including whether such activity has increased relative to the increase for boys) and the contexts in which girls engage in violent behavior.Read more

This article questions the definition and measurement of bullying among genders. Because females often experience more indirect forms of bullying such as teasing, rather than direct bullying/physical violence, it appears in most research that males are more likely to be both perpetrators and victims of bullying. Thus, the experiences of females have been mostly overlooked. The authors utilize data from two waves of a longitudinal panel study of 1,222 youths in 15 U.S. schools to examine the correlates and consequences for both genders of direct and indirect bullying.Read more

Recent research on bullying shows that a significant number of 11 to 16 year olds nationwide are suffering from bullying on their school journeys. There is also a concern because a large proportion of those who witness bullying often do not tell anyone.

This article explores modern-day bullying by delving into one Worcester girl's story about being bullied and the school's response. The effects of bullying are well documented and this article shows how these incidents can have a drastic influence on a child’s psyche. The 2010/2011 school year is the first affected by Massachusetts’ thorough new anti-bullying law. The new law requires that all schools in the state—public, charter and nonpublic—must report instances of bullying to all parents/guardians of those involved.Read more

The National Girls' Caucus, an advocacy group initiated by PACE (Practical, Academic, Cultural Education) Center for Girls, Inc., focuses national attention on the unique needs of girls involved with the juvenile justice system. The article discusses the need for gender-specific services to break the self-destructive behaviors exhibited by system-involved girls and describes the initial meeting of the group to do this.Read more

Victimization is consistently identified as the first step along a girl's pathway into the juvenile justice system. The increasing criminalization of girls is fast becoming a problem, and Leslie Acoca addresses the needs of adolescent girls, arguing this is a necessary first step in halting the intergeneratonal cycle of family fragmentation and crime. Acoca explores the reality underlying the existing statistics to find out if girls are in fact becoming for violence or if the recent trends are partially an artifact of girls' lower base rate of arrests and delinquency cases since the 1970's.Read more