Citation

Gumpel TP, Meadan H. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 2000; 70(3): 391-404.

Affiliation

Department of Special Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. TGumpel@vms.huji.ac.il

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Wiley-Blackwell)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11059118

Abstract

BACKGROUND: An important first step in understanding school-based violence is understanding children's subjective perceptions of the phenomena. Understanding these perceptions is likely to be a major factor in determining the integrity of both prevalence and intervention studies. AIMS: We investigated how elementary and secondary aged children perceived school-based violence. SAMPLE: A sample of 979 children from a nested random sample of elementary (grades 3-6) and middle school (grades 7-8) classrooms in Jerusalem participated in this study. METHODS: To understand children's perception of school violence, we used an instrument composed of 19 dichotomous items, each presenting a one-line description of a behaviour, which the respondent would define as either 'intentionally harmful' or not. RESULTS: Eighth graders were significantly less likely to label the behaviours described as violent compared to all other grades; and seventh graders were less likely as compared to third, fourth and fifth graders; also, some between-gender differences were found. CONCLUSION: The respondents often view the behaviours described as intentional and aggressive; this finding should serve as an impetus to widen the scope of school-based violence interventions to include these behaviours, especially for younger children.

Language: en