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Racial/Ethnic Differences in Perceptions of School Climate and Its Association with Student Engagement and Peer Aggression

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Abstract

Research indicates that a positive school climate is associated with higher levels of student engagement and lower rates of peer aggression. However, less attention has been given to whether such findings are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. The current study examined whether Black, Hispanic, and White high school students differed in their perceptions of school climate, student engagement, and peer aggression as measured by the Authoritative School Climate survey. In addition, the study tested whether the associations between school climate and both student engagement and peer aggression varied as a function of racial/ethnic group. The sample consisted of 48,027 students in grades 9–12 (51.4 % female; 17.9 % Black, 10.5 % Hispanic, 56.7 % White, and 14.9 % other) attending 323 high schools. Regression models that contrasted racial/ethnic groups controlled for the nesting of students within schools and used student covariates of parent education, student gender, and percentage of schoolmates sharing the same race/ethnicity, as well as school covariates of school size and school percentage of students eligible for free- or reduced-price meals. Perceptions of school climate differed between Black and White groups, but not between Hispanic and White groups. However, race/ethnicity did not moderate the associations between school climate and either engagement or peer aggression. Although correlational and cross-sectional in nature, these results are consistent with the conclusion that a positive school climate holds similar benefits of promoting student engagement and reducing victimization experiences across Black, Hispanic, and White groups.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Donna Michaelis and Jessica Smith of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services for their support of the Virginia Secondary School Climate Study. We also thank members of the project research team including Patrick Meyer, Anna Heilbrun Catizone, Pooja Datta, Anna Grace Burnette, and Marisa Malone.

Author’s Contributions

TK participated in conceptualizing the study, participated in its design and coordination, conducted all statistical analyses, and drafted the manuscript; DC conceived of the study, participated in the design and interpretation of the data, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript; KS participated in the design and coordination of the study and contributed to drafts of the manuscript; FH participated in the design of the study, contributed to drafts of the manuscript, and created the data base used in the analyses. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This project was supported by Grant #2012-JF-FX-0062 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice; and Grant #NIJ 2014-CK-BX-0004 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904-4265, USA

    Timothy Konold & Dewey Cornell

  2. Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, India

    Kathan Shukla

  3. University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Francis Huang

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  1. Timothy Konold
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  2. Dewey Cornell
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  3. Kathan Shukla
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  4. Francis Huang
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Correspondence to Timothy Konold.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

All procedures in this study involving human participants were approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board for Social and Behavioral Sciences and were in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. For this type of study, formal consent was not required.

Informed Consent

All survey data reported in this study were collected anonymously. The principal of each school sent an information letter to the parents of each student invited to participate in the survey. The letter explained the purpose of the survey and offered them the option to decline participation. In addition, students had the option to decline participation at any time.

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Konold, T., Cornell, D., Shukla, K. et al. Racial/Ethnic Differences in Perceptions of School Climate and Its Association with Student Engagement and Peer Aggression. J Youth Adolescence 46, 1289–1303 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0576-1

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