Consider All Factors Shaping the Student's Decision-Making and Behavior

Threat assessment done correctly entails a deliberate and focused process for examining all relevant information, such as the student's personal history, relationships at home and school, recent life events, resiliency and coping style, etc. It is important to remember that you probably know less about the potential offender than you think, and that you try to view information through the student's eyes. The FBI has proposed a Four-Pronged Assessment Model that examines:

1. Personality of the Student

Behavioral Characteristics

· Capacity to cope with stress and conflicts
· Ways of dealing with anger, humiliation or sadness, disappointments
· Level of resiliency related to failure, criticism or other negative experiences
· Response to rules and authority
· Need for control
· Capacity for emotional empathy or respect for others
· Sense of self-importance compared to others (superiority/inferiority)

Personality Traits

· Tolerance for frustration
· Coping skills
· Focus on perceived injustices
· Signs of depression/other mental illness
· Self-perceptions (narcissism/insecurity)
· Need for attention
· Focus of blame (internalizes/externalizes)

2. School Dynamics

· Student's attachment to school
· Tolerance for disrespectful behavior
· Approach to discipline (equitable/arbitrary)
· Flexiblity/inclusiveness of culture
· Student's position in the pecking order among students
· Code of silence
· Supervision of computer access

3. Social Dynamics

· Peer group relationships and culture
· Use of drugs and alcohol
· Media, entertainment, technology
· Level and focus of outside interests
· Potential copycat effect of past incidents

4. Family Dynamics

· Parent-child relationship
· Attitudes toward pathological behavior
· Access to weapons
· Sense of connectedness/intimacy
· Attitude toward/enforcement of parental authority
· Monitoring of TV, video games, or Internet

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Adapted from informatin provided by the National Association of School Psychologists.
Developed by: Stephen Brock, Ph.D., NCSP,who is on the faculty of California State University-Sacramento and Chairs the NASP Crisis Intervention Interest Group; and Shane Jimerson, Ph.D. NCSP, who is on the faculty of the University of California Santa Barbara.
With Phil Lazarus, they are co-editors of the NASP publication, Best Practices in School Crisis Prevention and Intervention.
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