Effects of Community, School, and Student Factors on School-Based Weapon Carrying

• Author: Adam M. Watkins
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204008320258
• Published date: 01 October 2008
• Date: 01 October 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

386

Effects of Community, School,

and Student Factors on

School-Based Weapon Carrying

Adam M. Watkins

University of North Carolina Wilmington

Extant research has theorized that community conditions affect the level of student violence

in and around schools, yet few studies have tested this proposition directly. This research does

so by assessing whether social conditions in a school’s attendance area affect the likelihood of

students bringing weapons to school. Current results indicate that the level of economic dis-

advantage, residential mobility, and violent crime in a school’s attendance area are unrelated

to student-level weapon carrying. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: multilevel framework; school community conditions; student weapon carrying

Although the influence of community characteristics on school violence has been the

focus of theoretical arguments (see e.g., Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Gottfredson, 2001),

few studies have examined explicitly the impact of broader community conditions on stu-

dent violence in and around schools (Laub & Lauritsen, 1998; Welsh, Greene, & Jenkins,

1999; Welsh, Stokes, & Greene, 2000). In fact, based on the arguments of routine activities

theorists such as Cohen and Felson (1979), existing research has been just as inclined to

assess whether schools affect the level of crime in nearby areas (see e.g., LaGrange, 1999;

Roman, 2004; Roncek & Faggiani, 1985; Roncek & Lobosco, 1983), rather than assess

whether conditions in nearby areas affect the level of crime in and around schools.

This research explores the latter relationship by addressing the question of whether com-

munity characteristics affect the level of school-based weapon carrying among high school

students. In particular, this research examines whether three measures of a school’s atten-

dance area—economic disadvantage, residential mobility, and violent crime—are signifi-

cantly related to between-school variability in student-level weapon carrying, after

adjusting for individual correlates of school weapon possession. This assessment is under-

taken with a national sample of roughly 10,000 students attending 55 high schools. The

analytic model employed in this research contributes to the literature by examining school-

based weapon carrying within a multilevel framework that, most notably, incorporates mea-

sures of school community characteristics. When examining school weapon possession or

student violence more broadly, existing studies have often failed to account for the broader

environmental conditions in which schools operate (see e.g., Bailey, Flewelling, &

Youth Violence and

Juvenile Justice

Volume 6 Number 4

October 2008 386-409

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10.1177/1541204008320258

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Author’s Note: I would like to thank Scott Decker for his assistance in acquiring the data for this research, as

well as providing helpful feedback. I am also grateful to Eric Baumer, Richard Rosenfeld, Eric Stewart, and

Pamela Wilcox for providing invaluable comments on a prior version of this manuscript. I am solely responsible

for any mistakes or omissions that may remain.

Watkins / School-Based Weapon Carrying 387

Rosenbaum, 1997; DuRant, Krowchuk, Kreiter, Sinal, & Woods, 1999; Simon, Crosby, &

Dahlberg, 1999).

Factors Associated With School-Based Weapon Carrying

Many researchers now share a similar conviction that child and adolescent outcomes

are best examined from a multilevel or ecological perspective (see Bronfenbrenner,

1979, 1989), which assumes that multiple social contexts, such as families, schools, and

neighborhoods, concurrently work together to influence youth behaviors (Rankin &

Quane, 2002). This argument is supported by the marked increase in studies recently

assessing “neighborhood effects” on child and adolescent outcomes (see Leventhal &

Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002). Interestingly,

although delinquency-related acts committed by youths in their broader communities

have been a regular focus of studies assessing neighborhood effects (see e.g., Anderson,

2002; Elliott et al., 2007; Knoester & Haynie, 2005; Rankin & Quane, 2002; Wikström

& Loeber, 2000), comparatively few studies have explored the potential influence of

neighborhood or community factors on violence committed by youths at school (Laub

& Lauritsen, 1998).

Failing to account for the larger environmental conditions in which schools operate has

been a common critique of school violence research. As Gottfredson (2001) indicated, one

consequence of studies failing “to measure and separate school from community contex-

tual effects [is they] provide only a combined estimate of the two effects” (p. 68). Although

some school violence studies have incorporated measures of a school’s external environ-

ment (see e.g., Baker, Mednick, & Carothers, 1989; Clark & Lab, 2000; Gottfredson &

Gottfredson, 1985; Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005), this research

generally has been limited to school-level analyses that are unable to account for more

proximate social settings, such as the family, that have been linked to youth violence at

school. Welsh et al. (1999) alluded to this limitation in stating that school violence research

has “too often been piecemeal, examining specific variables and levels of analysis in isola-

tion from one another” (p. 83). In other words, school violence research has been predom-

inantly undertaken at a single level of analysis, where studies identify characteristics

associated with “dangerous schools” or “dangerous students” but do not identify student-

and school-level factors linked to school violence simultaneously (Benbenishty & Astor,

2005; Khourny-Kassabri, Benbenishty, Astor, & Zeria, 2004).

This research overcomes these shortcomings by examining school-based weapon carry-

ing within a multilevel framework, where variables measuring attributes across social set-

tings at multiple levels are assessed concurrently, including measures of the broader social

environment in which schools operate. This research proceeds with a discussion of factors

that have been associated with youth weapon carrying in general and school-based weapon

carrying specifically. The following discussion is intended to address how meaningful cor-

relates of student weapon carrying may be operating across multiple contexts, and in the

process, underscores how the application of a multilevel framework may advance our

understanding of student weapon possession.