Although survey invitations were directed solely to school principals, we assume that these principals responded to our survey on behalf of their schools and interpret their data accordingly.
In total, 1,746 individuals completed our 20-minute survey, and we weighted their responses to be representative of the national population of K–12 public school principals and the schools in which they serve.
To answer our research questions, we investigated national patterns in educators’ survey responses based on school characteristics and state policy context related to BTAM.
More specifically, we examined differences in educators’ responses based on six school characteristics: (1) grade levels served, (2) school locale, (3) school neighborhood poverty status, (4) student racial/ethnic composition, (5) school enrollment size, and (6) district enrollment size.
Where appropriate, we also examined differences in educators’ responses according to the BTAM state policy context in 2019.
Specifically, we drew on a systematic analysis of state-level laws and policies related to threat assessment completed by Child Trends and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) and published in 2021.
We used these data to divide states into three groups, roughly corresponding to their policy context at the time of the review (2019):
Early legislation states (18 states), including states where, in 2019, state legal requirements, regulations or district policy required school districts to adopt threat assessment as a safety measure.
This category could include states that had explicit laws about schools using the practice, or policies requiring training or mandating assessment processes as part of their response to violent incidents (sometimes in the broader context of bullying and violence response).
These states were Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
States that encouraged schools to use BTAM (20 states), combining states where, in 2019, state law, regulation, or district policy encourage[d] districts to adopt threat assessment policies and states where BTAM was not addressed in state law or regulations, but was covered in non-codified policy.
States in this group consisted of Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.
Other states (13 states), which included those where BTAM was not addressed in state law or regulation as of 2019.
These states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (Child Trends and NASBE, 2021).
We interpret principals’ responses as speaking on behalf of their schools and therefore often report results using the school as the unit of analysis (e.g., “percent of schools who said X”).
However, for survey items that ask about principals’ perceptions, we report using the principal (e.g., “percent of principals who said Y”). These terms can be interpreted interchangeably.
The 2019 compilation of law and policy was the most up-to-date source of comprehensive information on BTAM requirements nationally at the time of survey sampling and planning.
A complete list of the survey items administered to principals and the response frequencies is available in Appendix A.
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