Students who carry weapons to high school - Comparison with other weapon-carriers

Purpose: To determine if those who have recently carried a weapon on school grounds differ from those who carry weapons elsewhere. We hypothesized tha t involvement in other problem behaviors and exposure to school crime and v iolence would be associated with risk for weapon carrying on school grounds . Methods: The data for this study were from the 1995 Youth Risk Behavior Sur vey of 10,904 high school students. Logistic regression analysis was used t o examine risk for weapon carrying on school grounds. Results: Among the students who carried a weapon, 48% carried a weapon on s chool grounds. Female gender, lower parental education levels, substance us e on school grounds, involvement in physical fights, exposure to school cri me and violence, frequency of weapon-carrying, and gun carrying distinguish ed students who carried weapons on school grounds from those who carried we apons off school grounds. Conclusions: The results suggest that weapon-carrying on school grounds is associated with individual and school-related characteristics. Efforts to r educe weapon-carrying on school grounds might focus on reduction of student s' actual and perceived vulnerability to victimization, as well as by helpi ng students understand that other problem behaviors increase their risk for violence. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 1999.