Fighting To and From School—NYC Youth Violence Survey

Abstract

The Fighting To and From School subscale is a specialized, four-item component derived from the comprehensive New York City Youth Violence Survey (NYC YVS). Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this instrument is designed exclusively to quantify the frequency and situational context of physical fighting and victimization experienced by students while they are commuting between home and school.

Initial findings from the NYC YVS, which surveyed over 5,000 students in grades 6 through 12, highlighted the severity of the issue: 56 percent of respondents reported being victims of some form of violence during their commute. While verbal harassment was the most common form of victimization, 17 percent reported experiencing physical assault. The data revealed critical demographic disparities, with students residing in low-income areas and specific boroughs (Manhattan and the Bronx) reporting significantly elevated rates of exposure to violence.

Keywords

Youth Violence, School Commute Safety, Physical Fighting, Verbal Harassment, Delinquency, Antisocial Behavior, New York City, CDC, School Health, Victimization.

Authors

Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the “Fighting To and From School” items is to provide quantitative data regarding the incidence and specific characteristics of physical altercations involving adolescent students outside the immediate school grounds, yet directly linked to their daily school routine. This information serves a critical function in public health surveillance, allowing officials to monitor trends in youth aggression and victimization in non-school environments.

The detailed responses collected enable public health officials and educational administrators to pinpoint high-risk locations, such as specific subways, streets, or housing projects, and identify typical perpetrators, including strangers or gang members. This granular data facilitates the strategic deployment of resources by organizations like the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) and local law enforcement, ensuring interventions, such as increased police presence or community outreach, are targeted effectively to mitigate risks associated with student violence exposure.

Construct

The “Fighting To and From School” subscale measures dimensions related to Delinquency and Antisocial Behavior, specifically focusing on Off-Campus Victimization and Aggression experienced during transit to and from school. While the items are often treated as distinct behavioral indicators rather than loading onto a single psychological factor, they collectively assess a student’s exposure to and participation in physical conflict over the preceding 12 months. The scale is structured to capture four essential contextual aspects of this behavior:

• Frequency of Physical Fighting: Quantifying the total number of times a student was involved in a physical fight while commuting.
• Location of Conflict: Identifying the specific environment where the majority of these fights occurred (e.g., street, subway, or housing project).
• Identity of Opponent: Determining the nature of the relationship between the student and the person they fought (e.g., stranger, friend, or gang member).
• Severity of Injury: Measuring the frequency of physical fights that resulted in injuries serious enough to necessitate professional medical treatment by a doctor or nurse.

Validity

Although the original documentation does not provide explicit psychometric validation coefficients (such as construct or criterion validity coefficients) specifically for this four-item subscale, its development within a large-scale public health surveillance effort ensures strong face validity regarding the measurement of youth violence exposure during the school commute. Furthermore, the measures demonstrate consistency with established instruments used in broader monitoring programs, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS).

The scale exhibits high ecological validity, evidenced by its direct practical utility and subsequent impact on policy. The survey results prompted concrete actions by the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE), including the implementation of increased police patrols and targeted community outreach in identified high-risk transit corridors, thereby validating the instrument’s relevance to real-world public policy and school safety initiatives.

Reliability

The source documentation lacks explicit statistical measures of reliability, such as Cronbach’s alpha or test-retest coefficients, specific to this four-item subscale. However, the overall New York City Youth Violence Survey, from which this subscale is drawn, utilized rigorous, standardized data collection protocols and extensive sampling methodologies characteristic of CDC surveillance programs. This robust methodology suggests that the data collected possesses the high methodological reliability required for generating accurate and stable population prevalence estimates of youth aggression and victimization.

Factor Analysis

Specific details concerning the factor structure or the application of exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis to the four items comprising the “Fighting To and From School” subscale are not available in the provided source material. Given the distinct nature of the questions—which address disparate contextual factors (frequency, location, opponent identity, and injury severity)—they are typically aggregated and treated as individual, non-redundant behavioral indicators within a composite index of youth aggression and victimization, rather than being analyzed as measures of a single, underlying latent psychological construct.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report Questionnaire (Public Health Surveillance Subscale)

Format: Multiple-choice questions requiring respondents (students) to select frequency or situational categories based on their experiences over the past 12 months.

Language Available: Primarily English (Original administration context).

Population Group: Adolescents and Youth

Age Group: Grades 6 through 12 (Initial NYC sample); Grades 9 through 12 (Referenced for national scoring methodology).

Population Details: The initial study involved a sample exceeding 5,000 students within the New York City school system. The derived scoring methodology is adaptable and designed for use with a national population sample of high school students, consistent with protocols used in the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS).

Test Methodology: Individual items are scored by assigning point values corresponding to the selected response categories. For categories representing a range of frequencies, a midpoint value can be assigned for calculation purposes. Incidence rates for specific items (e.g., Items 1 and 4) and their standard errors are calculated using established public health formulas:

Incidence Rate = ∑(i=1 to n) P_iC_i

Standard Error = √(∑C_i²(Var(P_i)))

Where P represents the proportion of subjects, i represents the levels of the variable of interest, and C represents the frequency of the behavior (or the assigned midpoint value).

Keywords

School Safety, Adolescent Delinquency, Victimization, Physical Assault, Public Health Surveillance, Youth Risk Behavior, Off-Campus Aggression.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Developed by a government division)

Affiliation Email addresses: Contact the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) at the CDC.

Correspondence Address: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The instrument was first published in 1993 as an integral part of the New York City Youth Violence Survey. As a public health tool developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), usage is generally unrestricted and free of charge for non-commercial research, academic study, and public health surveillance purposes. The scale is formally documented and contained within the resource: Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools.

Reference’s

Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. New York City Youth Violence Survey. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1993.

The full compendium containing this instrument (pages 175-176) can be downloaded here: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_Compendium.pdf (PDF Link)

Additional related documentation is available here: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED486261.pdf (PDF Link)

Items of the Fighting To and From School—NYC Youth Violence Survey

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. During the past 12 months‚ while going to or from school‚ how many times were you in a physical fight?

1. 0 times
2. 1 time
3. 2 or 3 times
4. 4 or 5 times
5. 6 or 7 times
6. 8 or 9 times
7. 10 or 11 times
8. 12 or more times

2. Where did most of the fights occur?

1. I did not fight going to or from school during the past 12 months
2. Housing project
3. Subway
4. Playground
5. Street
6. Other

3. Who did you fight with most often?

1. I did not fight going to or from school during the past 12 months
2. A stranger
3. A friend or someone I know
4. A boyfriend‚ girlfriend‚ or date
5. A group of youths (gang or posse members)
6. Other

4. During the past 12 months‚ while going to or from school‚ how many times were you in a physical fight in which you were injured and had to be treated by a doctor or nurse?

1. 0 times
2. 1 time
3. 2 or 3 times
4. 4 or 5 times
5. 6 or 7 times
6. 8 or 9 times
7. 10 or 11 times
8. 12 or more times