Children's perceptions of school-based violence.
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.


OBJECTIVE
We investigated how elementary and secondary aged children perceived school-based violence.


METHODS
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.


CONCLUSIONS
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.
Gumpel
T P
TP
Department of Special Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. TGumpel@vms.huji.ac.il
Meadan
H
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D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008297:Male; D012574:Schools; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*