School Safety: What additional research is needed and how should it be conducted and translated for schools to have the maximum impact on practice?

WestEd’s Anthony Petrosino* and coauthors addressed this question in an article published in Translational Criminology, the magazine of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, George Mason University. The article, entitled “School Safety Research: Where Do We Go From Here?”, was published in the magazine’s Fall 2015 issue.

According to Petrosino and his coauthors, researchers and funding agencies alike should consider a multidisciplinary approach to school safety research, ensuring a range of agencies and organizations are involved in the design and implementation of research to tackle problems from multiple angles.

“We need to make the most efficient use of the funding available for new research,” state the authors, who argue that research be used to start identifying and filling the gaps.

And what are those gaps in school safety research? Here are several — in the form of questions — taken from the article:

  • What are the most effective school safety training mechanisms?
  •  What should we do when students who may be on a pathway to hurting themselves or others change schools or drop out?
  • What are the most effective strategies for keeping firearms out of schools?
  •  What should the next generation of threat assessment strategies look like?
  • Can social media be used to prevent or mitigate consequences of inappropriate or criminal behavior?

“It is not enough to simply list a set of topics for future research, or even to conduct that research,” the authors conclude. “Once the research is completed we need to know how to translate it for the school setting and ensure that decision-makers and educators view safety as a priority issue.”

To access the complete article, including additional recommendations by the authors, download Translational Criminology.

* Anthony Petrosino is the Director of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center.