Measuring School Climate Using the 2015 School Crime Supplement

This report focuses on the construction, assessment, and analysis of school climate scores using items from the 2015 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Since 1989, the student-reported data from the SCS have been used to generate national estimates of criminal and bullying victimization in schools and to evaluate differences in the prevalence of victimization over time and among different student groups. However, there also is a wide array of questions in the SCS that address student perceptions of school climate, including indicators of safety and disorder (e.g., presence of security guards, presence of gangs), quality of relationships at school (e.g., feeling that an adult or peer at school really cares about you), and student engagement in school (e.g., participation in extracurricular activities, future plans for education). Because the SCS is a primary source of national information on student criminal and bullying victimization, it is a unique resource for studying the relationships between school victimization and school climate.