The Measurement of School Disorder

Abstract

This chapter describes the research that went into developing measures of school disorder. The measures of disorder are limited largely to school rates of personal victimization. In other words, vandalism and property loss are excluded from the present focus. A sizable number of different items on the principal, teacher, and student questionnaires requested information about victimization experiences and school disruption. Information was requested about events that range in seriousness from remarks and gestures through rape and homicide. For the most part these items are specifically worded and refer to concrete experiences rather than to global reports of disorder. Exceptions exist. Principals were asked for their rating of the seriousness of the problem of “vandalism, personal attacks, and theft” during the 1975–1976 school year. And teachers reported on the frequency with which teachers “maintain control [keep order] in class.”¹