Background/Purpose This paper seeks to expand safe school and public health research to examine exact language in the 50 States educational statutes for themes related to K-12 school violence.
Method The researchers read the statutes and coded attributes for each of the major study categories: Punitive, Engaged, Educational, and Blended. Researchers used NVIVO to sort the data file into subsets based on their overall statute theme. The researchers further coded the data to indicate the language representation of student rights, due process, parental notification, zero tolerance, age appropriate punitive and corrective measures, and responsibilities of districts/schools.
Analysis/Results They created graphs for each state statute theme data subset demonstrating the distribution across statute type and language content for the data in the subset. A model emerged that represented the themes of the distinct characteristics of state statutes in each statute type
Conclusions Professionals will become familiar with the process used for collection and analysis and will learn summary results of the 50-state policy data. Attributes of categories, punitive, engaged, educational, and blended, will be shared and reflect a synthesis of all state policies.