School Records – Disciplinary Actions
Abstract: School Records: Disciplinary Actions is a 18-item tool used to collect information from school records about disciplinary events for a child during the previous school year. This measure was created for the Fast Track Project as a modification of both the School Archival Records Search (SARS, Walker et al., 1991) and the Sugai-Tobin archival review for kindergarten, elementary, and/or middle school, revised (STAR, Sugai and Tobin, 2001). This measure collects the date of any event requiring discipline and the corresponding reason for the disciplinary action on that date. Seven items list reason categories: Physical Fighting/Violence, Verbal Harassment, Non-Violent Activity (such as skipping class or defying authority), Weapons Possession, Vandalism/Theft, Possession of a Controlled Substance, and Reason Missing. Response choices are "yes (1)" and "no (0)." A second group of items collect information about the consequences of the event: Low or Medium Consequence, High-Level Consequence, Suspension, Expulsion (denied entrance to school for one month or longer), and Action Missing. For suspension, the number of days is recorded. A final item asks the person collecting data to rate the completeness of the school record. Responses are: "Clearly incomplete (1), " "Possibly incomplete (2)," and "Complete (3)." This measure contains no subscales. For Year 11, t-tests of means of disciplinary events and consequences for the normative and control groups show significant differences for several items: the Total Number of Disciplinary Events, Fighting, Verbal Harassment, Non-Violent Events, and Total Number of Violent Events. Actions that show significant differences are those involving Low Consequences, High Consequences, and Suspension. Chi-square results for Year 11 suggest that a recorded occurrence of one or more disciplinary events can distinguish high-risk from normative students. Depending on the construct under investigation, disciplinary records collected with the Disciplinary Actions tool should be useful to analysts.
Who Completed this Measure?: Observer
Cohort 1 - Administrative History
- Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
- Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
- Year 10 | grade 9 | age 15
- Year 11 | grade 10 | age 16
Cohort 2 - Administrative History
- Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
- Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
- Year 10 | grade 9 | age 15
Cohort 3 - Administrative History
- Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
- Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
Technical Reports:
Raw Dataset Name: OyP
Scored Dataset Name: DIAySPc
Keywords:
Controlled Substance Possession, Disciplinary Actions, Expulsion, Non-Violent Activity, Physical Fighting, Suspension, Theft, Vandalism, Verbal Harassment, Violence, Weapons Possession
Is this Measure Available for Public Use?: Yes
Obtain Measure:
Download the measure here
SAS Code for Scale Creation:
Download the code here
Measure Items and Scales:
| O11P6 | Date of action |
| cohort | Cohort |
| site | Study Site |
| tcid | Study ID Number |
| O11P4 | Is Child a Sibling of the Target Child? |
| O11P5 | Discipline actions in school records? |
| O11P7 | Physical fighting/violence |
| O11P8 | Verbal harassment or tormenting a person |
| O11P9 | Non-violent (skipping class, defiance) |
| O11P10 | Weapons |
| O11P11 | Vandalism/Theft |
| O11P12 | Possession of controlled substance |
| O11P13 | Reason for Action Missing |
| O11P14 | Action Taken-Low or medium consequence |
| O11P15 | Action Taken-High level consequence |
| O11P16 | Action Taken-Suspension out of school |
| O11P17 | Number of days suspended |
| O11P18 | Action Taken-Expulsion |
| O11P19 | Action Taken-Administrative Action Missing |
| O11P20 | Action Taken-Data from setting not appropriate |
| O11P21 | Rate the completeness of the record |
| sitecode | Actual Sitecode Entered |
| TREATMNT | Treatment Group (Interv/Cntl) |
| NORM | Members of Normative Sample |
| SEX | Sex |
| RACE | Race |
| tot_viol | tot_viol |
| ctevent | Count of o11p5-Events |
| ct7fight | Count of o11p7-Fighting |
| ct8harass | Count of o11p8-Verbal harassment |
| ct9nonv | Count of o11p9-Non-violent |
| ct10weapon | Count of o11p10-Weapons |
| ct11vandal | Count of o11p11-Vandalism/theft |
| ct12substance | Count of o11p12-Controlled substance |
| ct13evmiss | Count of o11p13-Reason for action missing |
| ct14lowcon | Count of o11p14-Low consequence |
| ct15hicon | Count of o11p15-High consequence |
| ct16suspend | Count of o11p16-Suspension |
| ct18expel | Count of o11p18-Expulsion |
| ct19consmiss | Count of o11p19-Consequences missing |
| ct_tot_viol | Count of Violence-total acts |