Preemptive Protection?: The Relationship Between Fear and Level of Violence Perpetration Among High School Students

Background and Purpose:  Although incident rates of school violence have declined across the United States, many high school students report feeling unsafe and experiencing threats from peers. The extant literature has explored students’ level of fear largely in relation to their victimization and school attendance; however, little attention has been paid to the role that feeling fearful and being threatened has on their perpetration of violence. Several scholars have argued that the catalyst for violence is fear, not anger, yet this concept has not been thoroughly explored in the literature. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to examine the extent to which feeling unsafe at school and number of times threatened at school are associated with the number of physical fights engaged in at school.

Methods: This study is a secondary data analysis of the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). Using a multistage, cluster sampling design, the YRBS presents data from a nationally representative sample of 15,425 high school youth. Variables were identified from questions in the YRBS: independent variable were feeling unsafe (defined as avoiding school due to not feeling safe as indicated by a 4 point scale on Question 15 of the YRBS) and being threatened (defined as being threatened in school in the last thirty days as indicated by a 7 point scale on Question 16 of the YRBS); whereas, the dependent variable was engagement in physical fights (defined as engaging in physical fights while at school as indicated by a 7 point scale on Question 19 of the YRBS). Variables were recoded to reflect only those responses that answered in the affirmative. Data analysis involved bivariate correlation followed by linear, multiple, and Poisson regression.

Results:  Findings indicate that 6.6% of youth reported feeling unsafe, and 7.6% reported being threatened. Of the youth who reported feeling unsafe, 33% (n=309) have engaged in fights, and of those who report being threatened, 38.5% report engaging in fights (n=426). Feeling unsafe (0.54, p<0.001) and being threatened (0.60, p<0.001) are both strongly correlated with engaging in fights. Findings indicate both feeling unsafe (β=0.34, p<0.001) and being threatened (β=0.45, p<0.001) predict engagement in physical fights.  Race/ethnicity only weakly predicts engagement in physical fights (β=0.13, p<0.05).  For each additional day of feeling unsafe in school youth were 16% more likely to engage in fights and for each additional incidence of being threatened, youth were 10% more likely to engage in fights.

Conclusions/Implications: Study findings suggest, first, that feeling unsafe and being threatened contribute to incidents of physical aggression; and, second, given the variance, that other factors are also at play. Understanding the additional factors that influence physical fights is crucial. Individual, institutional, and community-level characteristics must be considered as potential predictors that, when combined with feeling unsafe and being threatened, more fully explain the incidence of physical aggression. Implications for policy makers, school administrators and social workers involve changing the narrative surrounding violence to include the role that fear plays in perpetration. Doing so will open new avenues for intervention.