Building Social Capital in Youth to Mitigate School Violence: Analysis of the School Crime Supplement

Background/Purpose: Social capital is defined as the social groups, networks, and norms that mediate development opportunities and outcomes (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). Among youth, this form of capital is most often built through connections to adults.  Social Capital may be developed through institutional means within the academic setting or through agents within that setting. Within the schools, the structure of social capital may be created to prepare adolescents for young adulthood. Within our schools, youth violence remains one of the most troublesome public health challenges of our time. In 2014, more than 4800 youth died from homicide, making it the 3rd leading cause of death for youth, ages 10 to 24 years old. Youth violence presents a fertile field for the additional research and evidence-based community and school programming. This study seeks to understand how youth build their Social Capital through relationship building while in middle and high school settings in a way that increases their academic success, enhances student engagement, and decreases violence. We hypothesize that youth with higher levels of engagement across a spectrum of opportunities will have higher grades, greater overall success in schools, and lower reports of violence.

Methods: This secondary data analysis utilizes the National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement (SCS) from 2015. SCS reported interview data from youth age 12 to 18 who reported attending school in the previous six months. Households are randomly selected for participation in the survey and remain included for seven years, after which time the household cycles out of inclusion. The SCS 2015 included all households currently in the NCVS survey at the time of its administration. This cross-sectional survey provides a significant source of information about the type and extent of crime in the United States.

Results: Binary logistic regression was used to analyze factors that might predict signs of increased social capital among adolescents. Results indicated that youth with higher levels of positive social supports such as student engagement, academic performance, adult support and relationships, peer support and relationships, and a stronger sense of safety in the school predicted lower levels of youth violence victimization and increased overall well-being. Together, these form a structure of social capital growth in the lives of youth that led to an increase in positive outcomes.

Implications: Effective school-based violent prevention programs need elements of early education prevention efforts, ongoing evaluation of students’ progress, and student engagement. To develop these programs within a framework of Social Capital enhancement, practitioners should incorporate a multifaceted collaboration team and emphasize acquisition of values, skills, and competencies coupled with community awareness and strategic prevention efforts. Social workers are poised to develop prevention work in educational settings as well as coalition building with policy makers, community partners, law enforcement, and parents.

Stanton-Salazar, R. (1997). A Social Capital Framework for Understanding the socialization of racial minority children and youth. Harvard Educational Review, 67(1), 1-40.